


Swan Song

by backfire



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Anxiety, Blood and Violence, Canon Universe, Depression, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Relationship, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:08:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 65,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23507404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backfire/pseuds/backfire
Summary: It would be so easy to pretend that she doesn’t want anything more complex from him than this.(Or: Harry, Allie, and what comes after. Post Season 1.)
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 85
Kudos: 279





	1. the world can change in a day if you go away

**Author's Note:**

> season 2, but make it hallie.

Something she hadn’t realized about Luke’s parents’ wine cellar was how cold it would be.

It’s a basement, after all, and curated for the specific purpose of keeping wine at an optimal, chilled storage temperature. The first night they kept her down here after ushering her from the chaotic town mob, she was left completely alone, without even a member of the Guard to keep watch. At least, not where visible; Allie was convinced she could hear shuffling at the top of the staircase leading down into the cellar basement. Another one of Campbell’s purposeful tactics, she was sure — cut off all contact. Make her feel alone.

The last of summer still clung to the air when Dewey was kept down here for all those days as he awaited his trial and sentencing. Lexie had been here after Thanksgiving for that one night, but even that must have been mildly better than this — the true New England winter, December seeping through the ground and the walls and into the air. Allie could see her breath in front of her as she’d lain her head down on the tiled floor; the chair that had been there before was nowhere to be seen. Dried blood had clumped into her left eyelash from the small gash above her eyebrow when she finally found it in her to close her eyes.

Allie shakes that night, curled into a ball in the far corner of the room. But when morning comes (or at least, when it seems appropriate — there are no windows down here and no other way to approximate the time) she rights herself into sitting position, resolutely ignoring the ache of her back and in her wrists, and turns her eyes upon the glass door, waiting.

To her surprise, it’s not Campbell who first walks down the stars in the morning. She’d been expecting her cousin, all smug looking, to come and gloat, perhaps mock her a little bit for her imprisoned state.

Instead, it’s Luke. His betrayal still stings — Clark and Jason she could understand to a degree, but Luke had _been_ there through so many of her committee meetings, listened to her process, heard her struggles and anxieties about how to lead the town. Hell, he’d been one of the people who’d begged her to take Cassandra’s place. He’d been her friend.

“Brought you some breakfast,” he says awkwardly, setting down a tray of food by the foot of the door after he unlocks it.

Allie keeps her mouth shut. She has nothing to say to him.

For what it’s worth, Luke looks about as tired as she feels, like he hasn’t gotten a wink of sleep. Good, she thinks viciously. He can barely look at her, eyes skittering away as soon as they glance in her direction. He clears his throat awkwardly, and then leaves without another word.

The glass of orange juice and two pieces of toast don’t do much to ease the anger settling in her gut. In a way, Campbell _had_ gotten his opportunity to gloat, she thinks, by sending Luke. 

Luke, who was her friend. Good, kind-hearted Luke. Campbell’s way of saying _yeah, I even got Luke_ , so she’d feel even more alone. Even more distrustful of everyone who had been around her.

She’s angry, because it’s working. Angry at Campbell, angry at foolish Lexie and Harry, even angry at Will, who was always so insistent that she was being a good leader — one who, apparently, couldn’t even smell a coup forming right under her nose.

Most of all, Allie’s angry at herself — because she _knew_ this was going to happen. She always knew. 

_They’ll shoot me, just like they shot her. You’re asking me to die for you._ That’s what she’d said to Will all those months ago, because she’d known then how it would end. But it didn’t happen right away, so Allie let herself grow complacent, comfortable with the role. She genuinely enjoyed it for a while there, like during the speech she gave before Thanksgiving dinner where she could see the hope starting to light behind people’s eyes, and then during the meal when the fruits of everyone’s labor paid off and she truly felt like she had accomplished something, had _led_ these people. Her people.

She’d been a fool. Those people are no more loyal to her than they are to anyone who acts like they know what they’re doing, she realizes now. Campbell. Lexie. Harry. All you need is some kind of hook and they latch, mob mentality at its finest. Cassandra, flipping a coin to tails, over and over again, the crowd absolutely entranced — even though it means nothing. It’s that easy.

Allie remembers now, though, how this is meant to end, especially with Campbell behind the scenes. Her time’s up. 

The days go on like that for some time. She gets brought food and water twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, and gets three bathroom breaks. It’s always Luke, who can barely look at her and never says anything beyond terse, single words to describe what activity she’s meant to do. “Breakfast.” “Bathroom.” “Dinner.”

She thinks this must be some kind of punishment for him too, on some level, but she’s still too angry to dwell on it. At least he gets to go home and escape from it all at the end of the day, get fresh air, sleep in a warm bed.

Meanwhile, Allie spends the nights curled into herself, shaking from the cold, the tips of her fingers going numb as she tucks them under her armpits, trying desperately to retain some warmth. They haven’t given her a change of clothes or blankets or anything, nor have they let her take a shower yet. She can feel her hair getting greasy and her skin going dry from the crisp air, along with the general unpleasantness of staying in the same clothes for an extended period of time.

She still has too much pride to say anything about any of this when Luke makes his periodic visits, though. She’s not going to let Campbell think that he’s finally broken her — fuck _that._

Maybe this is going to be her entire life now. Maybe Will had been wrong when he said the moment she’s been waiting for had yet to come — maybe leading New Ham was it, and now that’s behind her.

Allie tries to remember the last time that leadership had felt good, properly good and worthwhile. It’d probably been before the Thanksgiving feast, before concerns of poison and sabotage had entered their minds. Before Lexie’s little improv stunt. Sitting there, enjoying food with her friends and peers, feeling like they’d successfully captured the spirit of _home._ Like their little town was really coming together, freshly christened and feeling like the start of something new.

Maybe the only things Allie has to look forward to now are her daily food and bathroom breaks. Maybe she can sit here until her bones turn brittle and her muscles atrophy and she withers away. Maybe she’ll die down here — of cold, of starvation, of sheer boredom. She supposes if the urge strikes her she could smash open any one of these wine bottles at random and get blazingly drunk, but she has a feeling that wouldn’t be appreciated.

The Pressman sisters — martyrs for the town of New Ham. People had learned their lesson, for a little while, after Cassandra. They stuck to the rules and were safe, sobered by the death of their leader, until the lesson had little by little had begun to slip from their minds. Allie wonders how long they’ll do the same for her, after she dies, before things descend into madness once again.

She’s in the wine cellar for three and a half days before someone other than Luke comes to visit her. Again, it’s not Campbell — Allie gets the feeling that she’s not going to be seeing her cousin at all. No doubt this is a calculated move on his part, to let her build up frustration or otherwise give her a reason to second guess herself and all the decisions she’s ever made. There’s no reason for Campbell to come down here and gloat — he’d done that when he’d gotten Elle to spit in her face. No, he’s done. It’s over for him, he’s won.

It’s Harry who trails into the corridor as almost an afterthought once Luke sets down her tray of food that evening. She’s sitting with her back against the far wall, knees pulled up, elbows resting on top of them.

Before she’d been led away into the car by the Guard that day in the town square, when Harry and Lexie announced their co-mayorship, Harry had given her a look. Allie hadn’t dwelled on it, too caught up in the madness of the day and the anger that followed. But she thinks of it now, the look in his eyes. At the time, she was too stunned by how quickly the day had turned, the rough hand at her elbow, the sting of the cut on her forehead. She’d looked blankly at Harry and then turned away, a loud buzzing in her head that prevented her from finding anything deeper in his expression.

But now, in her memory, it’s plain as day. Reading Harry Bingham has never been difficult for her, for whatever reason. She’s always been able to decipher him. Regret, shame, pride, anger, helplessness — all rolled into the dark of his eyes, the set of his jaw, the tightness of his mouth. Strangely enough, he’d looked almost like he had betrayed her. (Strange because Harry has never pretended to be loyal to her or anything she’d stood for — so why the look? Why the feeling?)

She ponders all this in the few seconds it takes for him to descend the stairs and approach the glass door, part of her brain taking in the sheer wonder of seeing someone new after the monotony of the past few days.

“Hey Allie,” he says, shuffling into the cellar behind Luke. “Uh...how are you?”

Allie looks at him blankly. Is he serious?

“Just peachy,” she says. She’s going for sarcasm, but it falls short as her voice comes out hoarse and dry from disuse. She licks her lips; they’re chapped and peeling from the cold.

“Listen, I—,” he begins, and then falters, his eyebrows furrowing in a split second. He’s scanning her over, she realizes, and she draws her knees further up until she thinks that she must look like she’s trying to make herself shrink under his scrutiny. “What are you wearing?”

“What?” The question catches her off guard. Why does he care?

“I just mean — they haven’t given you a change of clothes?” Harry looks sharply over at Luke, who just shrugs.

“Have you told them to?” Allie retorts. “Aren’t you supposed to be in charge now? Or wait, let me guess, _he_ never bothered giving you instructions and you guys are just treading water until he tells you what to do next?”

Luke winces at that; Allie can tell she’s hit the nail on the head. But Harry doesn’t seem to hear her, barrelling on.

“Jesus, Allie — have they just left you like this?” He sounds agitated, as if it isn’t partially his fault she’s like this, as he takes a step closer and peers down at her. This time, Allie forces herself to stay in position, to not shrink away from him. She’s not the least bit afraid of Harry, but she doesn’t want him to see what she knows is there — the fatigue, the shaking in her hands from the cold, the general state of being one would be in after being left in a basement for three consecutive days.

At once, Harry is straightening and, to Allie’s surprise, striding up to Luke.

“What the fuck?” he hisses under his breath. “You guys haven’t been taking care of her, she’s in the same fucking clothes, she’s sleeping on the floor, she’s fucking hypothermic because this is a literal freezer box. Or have you not noticed her lips turning blue?”

Luke just shuffles his feet — by nature, he’s not someone who would let another person freeze to death, but Allie knows he’s been too preoccupied with his own shame to properly look at her for longer than a cursory glance. 

“This is so fucked up,” Harry continues. “None of this was supposed to happen like this. And Allie — Jesus, Greg Dewey murdered her sister and she didn’t even treat him like this.” He gestures over to where Allie’s still sitting.

“You wanna stop talking about me like I’m not right fucking here?” Allie quips, crossing her arms, taking a keen interest in the direction of their conversation. She might despise Harry and still be stinging from Luke’s betrayal, but she would also do just about anything for a hot shower right now.

“Allie, look — I know I’m the last person you want to hear from right now. Believe me, I get it,” Harry says, turning to her. “But this,” he gestures down to her, “I can fix. That much I can do. Alright?”

“You know he won’t like it,” Luke mutters at Harry’s elbow. Ah, there it is: the fourth person in the room, the one behind this all, finally mentioned out in the open. Part of Allie’s glad — she’s not going crazy, and all of Campbell’s profligating hadn’t been for nothing. He really is the one calling all the shots.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Harry snaps. “ _I’m_ the mayor now, or co-mayor, or whatever.”

“So, what are you gonna do, Mr. Mayor?” Allie asks. Behind Harry, Luke looks at her when she speaks — really looks at her for the first time in days, and she knows he sees what Harry had seen. He looks stricken. She really is frozen to her core and, not for the first time, wonders how the town is faring under the Harry/Lexie/Campbell triumvirate now that winter is well and truly here.

Have people begun fighting in the streets yet over privatized food and resources? Is the heat still working? The gas lines? Are there contingencies in place in the case of snowstorms, power outages?

But then she remembers it’s not her problem anymore, and the reason for that is standing before her.

Harry thins his lips into a line. Allie can see the gears working in his head and remembers for a second that he had, in fact, been Cassandra’s rival in high school, which had to mean that his mental acuity was worth something when not addled with depression and alcohol.

“She shouldn’t even be here in the first place,” he says, speaking to Luke now. “This was specifically something that people were upset with, the way she treated people in holding — Lexie wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it. And now we’re doing the same. How does that make sense?”

Luke doesn’t have a good answer for that, mouth opening and then closing. Allie knows that Harry doesn’t give a damn about any of the fake civil liberties bullshit that Lexie spewed. This is for the optics of the situation so that when Luke turns tail and reports to Campbell, there’s an explanation for Harry going rogue on this matter.

At least, that’s what Allie thinks. Harry looks genuinely upset, and she can’t tell if that’s part of the optics, too.

Allie decides she’s done trying to figure Harry out; he’s not worth her time. The two of them can decide what to do with her and how they can justify it to Campell. She doesn’t care and they don’t deserve any more of her brain space. 

What does it matter if she spends the next couple days here in this wine cellar, or handcuffed to a radiator, or wherever else? It’s all going to end the same in the same place anyway so long as her cousin is in charge. 

  


* * *

  


Somehow Allie ends up finding herself standing before the Bingham residence from its great circle driveway. She hasn’t been here in weeks, but the sheer size of it always astounds her. Not that her house is small, by any means, but Harry’s place is that type of old New England money big.

“Come on,” Harry mutters, unlocking the front door. They’d come here alone, driving together in Harry’s car after Harry and Luke had argued for a while longer about.

In the end, Harry had said that he didn’t “give a fuck” and that he was “in charge now,” sounding rather petulant, in Allie’s opinion, for someone who’s meant to be responsible for their town of two hundred and twenty-odd people. She also doesn’t think that Luke is going to go running to report it to Campbell right away like Clark or Jason might have, and the argument is dropped kind of resignedly.

When they step inside, the place is empty and pristine. Like it’s been cleaned up and everything put back in its place, like something out of a copy of Architectural Digest, which kind of stuns her since she’s positive there’s no one around other than Harry to do that. She’s never seen it empty before, Allie realizes — the two times she’s been here, there had been people everywhere, from the party and then from the troupe of kids who moved in after Cassandra’s shared housing rule. That had probably been the thing that pissed Harry off the most from the Pressman rules: forcing him to share this big, beautiful house with everyone. 

At first Allie couldn’t understand it; she thought it was just because Harry was selfish and spoiled. And while that had been true, maybe there’d been something else too. The idea of having the people she loved and cared about around her all the time — Will, Grizz, Bean, Gordie — had comforted her. They’re her friends, after all. But Harry didn’t have anyone like that; his house was basically full of strangers.

Though it actually looks a bit lonely and out of place like this, she thinks, all empty, nothing but light and cold air to fill the wide spaces in the daytime.

Allie had come here willingly, without protest or really so much as a single word spoken to Harry; she can tell he feels awkward by the way he keeps clearing his throat and scratching the back of his head absently, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to talk to him. Underneath the hopeless, resigned attitude, the anger is still there.

But when Harry leads her to his bedroom and then pulls out a pair of handcuffs, she stiffens.

“What the fuck?” she asks.

“Come on,” Harry sighs. “Look, I’m not gonna hurt you, okay?”

Allie knows that Harry’s a coward, especially in this weird, deflated version of his old self, and she knows that she’s not afraid of him. But she still gives him a skeptical look.

“I’m not just gonna pretend like you’re not still a prisoner, okay?” Harry says, gesturing over to the radiator in the corner of his room. So that’s what his plan is.

“So you brought me here just so I could trade one cell for another? Only in this one I have to see your face all the time? No offense, but maybe I’d rather take the wine cellar,” she snaps at him, crossing her arms.

Harry pinches the bridge of his nose for a second before replying. “Look. You’re still in custody, okay? I can’t just let you roam the house and then have you escape in the middle of the day. But here there’s food, water, heat, a shower. You can read books, or watch TV, whatever. Okay?”

Allie rolls her eyes. If she had wanted to make a run for it, she would have when she first stepped foot outside. But she doesn’t, because there’s nowhere to run — she’s in a town whose residents cheered at her incarceration and attacked her with rocks, run by her psychopath cousin who she’s pretty sure wants her dead.

But three days alone of none or limited amounts of those small luxuries has made Allie seriously consider the plight of the criminal justice system. Truthfully, Harry’s description sounds far and away better than how she’d been passing her time in the wine cellar, but of course she isn’t going to say that out loud. She shrugs and sighs. “Fine. Whatever.”

He goes over to handcuff her, but Allie shifts uncomfortably, distinctly aware of the fact that she hasn’t showered or changed her clothes in days. “Can I at least use your bathroom first? Take a shower?”

“Uh, right, yes. Of course,” Harry says, stepping back.

No one bothered to let her grab any of her clothes or other belongings when they imprisoned her, and Harry obviously hadn’t had the forethought to do that for her before he brought her here. She raises her eyebrows at him expectantly.

“You got any clothes?”

“Oh, uh. Yeah. Why don’t you go in and I’ll uh…have them by the door for you when you’re done.”

Allie nods, and then makes her way over to his ensuite. He’s carefully avoiding looking at her, but right now all she can think about is getting under the hot shower and finally getting clean again.

His bathroom, like his room and the rest of the house, is enormous and stately. Modern finishes everywhere, polished handles, and a rainfall showerhead. She almost wants to laugh — the stark contrast of the luxury compared to the fact that they basically live in a post-apocalyptic hellscape is astonishing. For the first time in days, Allie looks at herself in the mirror. There are dark, almost bruise-like circles under her eyes and her skin is pallid and gritty. Her hair, which she’s always thought of as one of her best features, is greasy and hangs limply around her face.

When she first steps under the spray of the shower, Allie nearly sobs with relief. The sheer feeling of hot water running over her skin and into her hair, washing the weight of the world from her shoulders, is overwhelming. The sense of numbness that had coated everything since being locked in the wine cellar is gone, melted away by the steam and soap. For the first time in days, Allie feels a bit like herself again.

That wondrous feeling, however, turns once her thoughts and emotions rise to the surface. As she stands under the water, it all hits her again, like a monumental tidal wave that leaves her gasping and shuddering in its wake. Tears fall, stinging her eyes as they mix with the hot water from above, as she thinks back on the sequence of events that led her to be in this very spot, crying alone in Harry Bingham’s shower, where she’s basically his prisoner.

She misses Cassandra. She misses her mom. She misses Will, and Gordie, and the rest of her friends. She misses when the world wasn’t so fucked up. And she’s _sad_ — for herself, for the town, for all the people in New Ham who are going to struggle and fight with each other and die under Campbell’s rule, because she knows that’s going to happen.

When the last of her self-pity washes away down the drain, however, and she finally turns off the water, Allie’s back to where she’d been at the beginning: angry. Angry and betrayed.

There’s a fresh set of clothes waiting for her by the door when she cracks it open, like Harry had promised. An old sweatshirt and sweatpants that look to be around her size, perhaps some of Kelly’s old clothes she’d left here from the Before time. A fresh set of underwear too, probably also Kelly’s, that Allie tries not to feel weird about when she puts on. After all, they’re just clothes and she’s learned to detach meaning from worldly things months ago.

Harry’s nowhere to be seen when she steps outside the bathroom, her hair hanging in damp curls around her face. Good. She doesn’t want to see him right now, even though she still can’t puzzle out why exactly she feels betrayed by him. He’d been her original opponent from the start, after all. She guesses that she just never expected him to do it this way.

She’s looking through his bookshelf when Harry opens the door to his bedroom again, holding a glass of water.

“I wasn’t sure when you’d be finished,” he begins lamely, offering her the glass. Allie looks at it, arms crossed.

“Okay,” he mutters awkwardly, setting it down on his desk. “Look, I didn’t have to bring you here—”

“No, you didn’t,” Allie says, cutting him off. “So why did you? You could have just left me and no one would have cared. The whole town hates me, after all.”

“That’s not true—“

 _“These are the people you trusted, and they betrayed you,”_ she recalls, throwing his words back in his face. “You wanna tell me how you came up with that one? Because you _know_ I wasn’t trying to steal the election or whatever the fuck you guys accused me of.”

“It wasn’t — I wasn’t trying to,” he says, clearly struggling with how much he thinks he can tell her.

“You don’t have to pretend,” Allie scoffs. “I know it was Campbell. He came over to my house when they arrested me, like some kind of fucking movie villain. Said he wanted to ‘pull the strings,’ and then took Elle with him.”

Harry squares his jaw for a moment. “Why did you arrest Elle, anyway? You must have known that would make him mad.”

Allie feels herself stiffen, and then she turns to fully face him. “You don’t get to ask me that,” she says fiercely, enunciating each word. “Don’t you ever ask me that again. And I know you’re too caught up with his weird power trip, but if you were smart, you’d stay away from Campbell, too.”

Harry’s silent, though there’s a look of great conflict in his eyes. For a moment, something dark ghosts over his face before his expression smooths again — a mask, Allie can see. The same one he’d worn in front of the crowd that day when he declared her and Will traitors. All smooth and arrogant, like he can be his former self again if he just tried. A mask for someone who pretends to know what he’s doing.

“What are you going to do?” Allie challenges him. “You’re the mayor with Lexie now. I tried to ask her the same thing, but she just answered with bullshit. I know you’re not dumb, Harry. What are you going to do?”

“We already let everyone go back to their own houses,” he begins. It sounds practiced. “It’s been months and people deserve to live from the comfort of their own homes.”

“Okay? And?” Allie says. “What happens when the power goes out? The heat? The food supply goes bad? What are you gonna do? We literally had this debate with Cassandra when we first got here. What’s your plan then?”

“It’s been months, there’s no reason to think that might happen,” he shoots back.

Allie laughs derisively. “What a dodge! Weren’t you on the debate team? That’s not an answer.”

“We can’t live our lives in fear. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

“No, what you’re trying to say is that things should go back to the way they were when life was normal and we were in West Ham, because you’re too afraid to admit that this isn’t a _game._ We’re not going to wake up one day and get our lives back. This is our reality now, and you’re too much of a coward to face the consequences.”

Allie feels alive, thrumming with energy — this is the debate they were denied, this is what she might have said that day to him and to the whole crowd if Lexie hadn’t interrupted. Maybe with less vitriol and more of a message of hope, but still.

Harry doesn’t seem to have a good response. “I don’t have to answer to you anymore,” he says, deflecting. “In case you forgot, you’re still under arrest.”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten,” Allie says, gesturing around her. “Trust me, this is the last place I want to be right now. The two other times I was in this room weren’t fun, and I don’t expect this to be either.”

Harry snaps his mouth shut at that, his cheeks coloring slightly. Allie feels vindicated — she was prepared to never bring their one-time thing up again, and she was especially never going to mention how lackluster the experience had been, but it feels immensely satisfying to throw it back in Harry’s face.

“So go ahead. Lock me up, handcuff me, throw away the key. I don’t fucking care,” she says, offering up her wrists.

“I’m not—we don’t have to do it like that,” Harry says, frustrated. “Just. You can’t leave this room, okay? Can we just agree on that?”

“How generous of you,” Allie says sarcastically. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I doubt Campbell’s going to let me stay here.”

“Yeah, well, Campbell’s not the one in charge.”

“Really? Could have fooled me.”

They don’t speak again after that, for which Allie is grateful. While she’d been in the shower, Harry had created a makeshift sleeping spot for her next to his bed, on the side opposite from the window, with pillows and blankets and what looks like an old sleeping bag. Obviously he wouldn’t offer to let her have the bed while he slept on the floor. Typical. But she doesn’t say a word about it, and though she’s loath to admit it, the simple feeling of being covered by a blanket is miles better than shivering on the floor of Luke’s wine cellar.

Despite herself, Allie falls asleep quickly, too exhausted physically and mentally by the events of the past few days. Her mind shuts down when she closes her eyes, and she has no idea if or when Harry turns the lights off and goes to bed.

When she wakes, the morning sun filtering in through the slats in the heavy blinds from the window, Harry is gone. Other than the rumpled spot in his bed where the covers are thrown off, she wouldn’t have been able to tell if he had slept at all. When she looks at the digital clock on the nightstand, Allie realizes — of course he’s already up, because she’s been asleep for nearly twelve hours, longer than she’s slept in weeks, months, ever since the night after prom.

The first thing she does when she gets up is pull the blinds on the window all the way up, letting proper daylight fill the room. It’s another cold, bleak looking day outside without a trace of blue in the sky behind the thick veil of clouds. The trees are now all bare and the grass is dead, the whole world looking as stark and empty as the sky above. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, Allie thinks, but she’s too tired to try and find it.

When she pokes her head out of the room, Luke is standing by the door, a gun-shaped bulge in the pocket of his letterman jacket. Of course she’s going to be guarded when Harry’s not there to watch her himself. Stupid of her to have that split second of hope that maybe she could walk right out the front door. Maybe not to escape — she knows there’s nowhere to go — but just to have the semblance of freedom for a little bit.

“What are you doing?” he hisses when he sees her. “Get back inside!”

It’s only after she senses the urgency in her tone that she realizes that they’re not alone in the house. There are voices coming from the kitchen downstairs, where it sounds like two people are trying to have a hushed argument. Campbell’s voice, she realizes. So he’s finally been caught up on Allie’s whereabouts.

Luke makes her shut the door, but Allie presses her ear up against the wood, straining to make out bits of the conversation. It’s hard to decipher, but she manages to catch a few words and phrases. They’re disjointed and she can’t really catch the meaning behind any of them, until suddenly they’re in a full blown argument. She thinks she hears Harry yell something that sounds like, “fine, I don’t fucking care,” but she can’t be sure.

She chances at cracking the door open again when she stops hearing them for a bit. Luke makes a noise of protest and then stands in front of the door, blocking her view — not that there’s anything to see other than the hallway. It seems like it’s over now anyway, because she hears Campbell tell Harry “good fucking luck, dude,” before he leaves through the front door.

Harry comes storming into the room after some moments, looking manic and disheveled. There’s something strange about the way he moves, like he can’t focus on anything as he paces around.

“He didn’t take it well, I guess,” Allie says, leaning against his desk and crossing her ankles.

“Shut the fuck up,” Harry says, agitated. “I need to think.”

“There’s a first.”

He gives her a baleful look and goes back to pacing.

“Why are you doing this, Harry? What is there to think about?” Allie asks. “A few weeks ago you could barely get out of bed. Now you want to revolutionize the town? Go all Adam Smith on the place? Oh, but you’re too benevolent to let me, the person you planned a fucking _coup_ against, get hurt. Didn’t you think this through at all, before doing it? Any of it?”

“I said shut the fuck up!” Harry yells, holding his head in his hands. His hands are shaking, Allie notices, and the gleam in his eye looks way more panicked than the situation calls for. “I was just trying to help you. And yeah, Campbell wasn’t happy about that. But like I said, he’s not in charge around here.”

“Okay, sure,” Allie says, her voice belying anything genuine. “And what about Lexie?”

“She doesn’t give a shit about what happens to you as long as you’re out of the way. And you know she wasn’t a fan of the wine cellar,” Harry says, but he seems distracted. He’s sweating now, too, wiping a hand against his forehead. Allie’s seen Harry in all kinds of states before, but never like this, never so jittery, eyes darting everywhere. There’s a bottle of whiskey on his desk, which he grabs when he notices and uncorks at once, taking a large swig directly from the bottle.

“Wow. Little early, don’t you think?”

He doesn’t say anything in reply, just wipes the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. And then he sweeps out of the room, taking the bottle with him. 

  


* * *

  


Allie doesn’t see him again until it’s dark outside. 

As is custom, Luke brings her meals twice a day. Not too much has changed, on principle, except now she has access to a bathroom and a shower whenever she wants, and she can while away the hours in Harry’s room reading from his bookshelf or looking out the window, both of which she does in abundance. She’s almost finished with _The Old Man and the Sea_ when he comes back in, stumbling and smelling of booze.

She doesn’t say anything to him as he makes his way inside, cursing under his breath when he catches the edge of his hip on the pool table. It’s a ridiculous thing to have in one’s bedroom; Allie’s always thought so, from the first time she’d seen it. Who the fuck is he playing pool with?

Harry barely acknowledges her from where she’s sitting at his desk. She swivels around in the computer chair and watches as he seems to collapse into a sitting position on the edge of his bed after kicking off his shoes. She doesn’t know if he’s still drunk from this morning, or if he’d started drinking again later after dealing some more with the woes of leadership. She doesn’t ask and he doesn’t say anything; eventually, she turns her back to him to finish reading the book.

After a long while, Harry finally breaks the silence.

“How did you do it?” he asks, his voice muffled. She turns around and sees that he’s lying more fully on the bed now with his face half pressed into his pillow.

“Do what?”

“Deal with everyone, all the time.”

“Not as easy as it looks, hm? Leading the town?” She wants to gloat, but Harry looks like he’s about to pass out. “I don’t know,” she says truthfully after a moment. “I had a lot of help from my friends, I guess. A support system.”

It’s kind of a low blow. Harry has nothing like that, other than Campbell and whatever hold he seems to have over Harry to be able to pull the strings from behind the scenes. He doesn’t move, just gives a muffled, humorless laugh.

“Lexie’s a bitch, isn’t she?” he says after a pause, turning onto his back so he’s looking up at the ceiling.

Allie actually cracks a smile at that. “I guess. You kind of are too, though.”

“Ouch.”

“I mean, I know we weren’t friends and we didn’t agree on everything, but. For some reason, I never really expected you to do this,” she says, speaking honestly for the first time.

The dim light of the bedroom, illuminated only by the small reading lamp on Harry’s desk, casts everything in a muted, orange glow. From his spot in the bed, the moonlight shines through the window from where the sky is, at last, clear of clouds. It’s hard to see his expression, so Allie continues on, the question poised at the tip of her tongue. She’s asked it before, but not in any productive, real way where she thought he’d give a truthful answer. Now, just the two of them in his bedroom, without the world pressing in around them, without an argument about to flare up, Harry’s limbs loose with liquor as he lies morosely on top of the covers, she feels like maybe this is a chance for him to be honest.

“Why are you doing all this, Harry?”

She can see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “I don’t know,” he half-mumbles. “Part of me wanted to, at first. I knew it was a bad idea but...Campbell talked me into it. But then it all got so crazy. I didn’t want that,” he says, referring to the forceful takeover. “I guess I didn’t really have a choice.”

“What do you mean?” Allie says, sensing that they’re about to get to the root of the matter. “Is it Campbell?”

Harry just shoots her a look, angry and hopeless. “It doesn’t matter. Not even a week in and I fucked it all up,” he mutters, pressing a hand over his eyes. He looks exhausted.

Allie stands up and goes over to the bedside to look down at him. Harry squints up at her from beneath the palm resting on his forehead. Their position mirrors when she had visited him those few months ago, before Thanksgiving, when he could barely get out of bed. Things are slightly different now — he’s clean shaven and showered now, for one, and wearing actual clothes instead of days-old sweatpants. But there’s the same look in his eyes, like there’s no point to it all, like he’s drowning. In this moment, the mask is off, and he’s just a vulnerable boy who doesn’t know what to do.

This time, Allie doesn’t reach out to grasp his wrist in a moment of warmth and understanding.

“Get over it,” she tells him seriously, each word clear. He takes his hand off his forehead and blinks at her. “Your actions have consequences, Harry. Whether you asked for them or not. So now you have to deal with them.”

And then she turns away from him. There’s nothing left to say, so she heads into the bathroom to wash up and get ready for bed.

When she exits, all the lights are off and Harry has his back turned to her, still in the same clothes from the day. Allie can’t tell if he’s asleep or not, so she lays down in her little nest of blankets on the floor and tries to ignore his presence until she can finally fall asleep.

The next morning, Harry’s gone again when she wakes up and doesn’t return until late at night, when she’s already curled up in her spot on the floor. 

The days go on for some time like that; Allie barely sees him, and when she does, they hardly speak. When he returns, always at night, sometimes he’s drunk, sometimes he’s not, but he seems resolute in ignoring her. At first, Allie tries to press him for information — about the town, about what they’re doing to Will or Gordie, about Becca and the baby, about the land that Grizz found. But he doesn’t budge. The most she can get out of him is a blank look, mask once again fully in place, if she manages to get him to glance in her direction at all. 

She stops trying after a day or two, content to just spend the days reading all his books — and he has many. There’s a lot of Hemingway, a lot of Twain, some Faulkner, some Fitzgerald. The great American classics, and she almost wants to laugh at how annoyingly old money and performative it is, save for the fact that she knows Harry probably did actually read all of them. No one gets a lead part in _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_ without having an appreciation for literature; that much she can remember from Cassandra and their long lost high school days.

On the third day (or is it the fourth? or fifth? everything’s starting to blend together for Allie), Harry doesn’t get out of bed for hours and hours. She wakes up and he’s there, curled under the covers with his back turned against the window so that he’s facing the floor side where she sleeps. From this angle, she can’t see his face, but she can see the top of his head poking out beneath the sheets, his hair wild and dark and reflecting the bright glow coming in through the window.

It’s snowing, she realizes with wonder, as she climbs out of her nest and over to the window. There’s a fresh coat of it sticking to the entire earth, coating the world in a powdery blanket. The first snow of the year.

Something feels like it dislodges in Allie’s chest at the sight of the flurry still falling from the sky. She’s always loved the snow, since she was a girl — particularly fresh, untouched snow. Everything always looks so pure and clean, like a new beginning for the whole world. But now, it’s something other than childlike wonder lodged in her throat. When they’d all arrived in this place on those buses, summer was still fresh in the air. The days were long and the nights were warm. They had parties, wild and drunk and screaming through the streets, not yet realizing the depth of their plight.

Now, everything is cold and still and things are so, so different.

Harry groans as he stirs. Allie doesn’t turn to look at him, but through the reflection in the window, she can see him lifting his head up and squinting over at her before pulling the covers over his head and going back to sleep. She doesn’t say anything to him to try to get him up either, just gets dressed and sits quietly at his desk to pick up where she had left off in _As I Lay Dying_. 

In a strange way, those few days are peaceful. She doesn’t have to worry about how the winter will affect everyone, how they’re going to survive through the cold, how they’re going to start farming once spring finally comes. She can even pretend Harry’s not there, especially when he leaves the room for the rest of the day as soon as he finally drags himself out of bed. She can even pretend that she can’t see what’s going on with him, how he’s regressing before her eyes into the state he’d been in those weeks before Thanksgiving.

She can play pretend and lose herself in the comfort of familiar fiction, doing nothing except watch the snow fall outside the window.

The problem comes at night, after she’s gone to sleep.

That’s the thing about nightmares, she supposes: they come when you can’t help it. The snowfall of that day put those gnawing troubles back in her mind no matter how hard she tried to banish them, made her reflect on how much time has passed since they arrived in New Ham. About how different she is as a person — the old Allie, the one living in the shadow of her older sister, is gone. Allie the leader is gone now, too, and whatever’s left — she doesn’t exactly know who this person is, yet.

That night, after she closes her eyes and slips into sleep, she’s back on the green in front of a crowd that jeers at her when she steps out of the car, spitting words like “traitor” and “bitch.” 

Only this time, when the first rock hits above her eyebrow, Lexie doesn’t step in to put a stop to it. A cruel smile splits across her face and the rocks keep coming, more and more, the crowd getting louder and more vicious with each throw. Next to her, Will collapses, his head cracked open, blood pooling, vivid red and sickly, onto the pavement.

She can barely see through the barrage, but she cries out desperately for help from someone, anyone, in the crowd. She can feel her bones crack, blood dripping into her eyes and blurring her vision. Next to her on the steps, Lexie cheers as she falls to the ground, bleeding and broken.

Behind her, Harry watches on passively, doing nothing, saying nothing.

A shadow steps forward from the crowd and it’s Dewey, bleeding through the bullet hole above his eyes that she put there. He holds a gun up to her head, and the crowd chants, “Do it! Do it!”

Dewey morphs into Campbell, who smirks at her before lowering the hammer, who morphs into Cassandra, who has tears in her eyes, and suddenly the gun is in Allie’s hand and it’s pointing at her sister. Her finger, of its own volition, pulls the trigger.

When she’s jolted awake, it’s by Harry shaking her by the shoulder.

“Allie,” he says, half-whispered and urgent. “Allie!”

Her face is wet with tears and she’s sweating and shaking; it takes her a few seconds to be able to blink her way back to reality. Harry’s kneeling beside her on the floor in the dark. She can’t see his face, but his hand is warm where it clasps her shoulder. Immediately, she’s overcome with mortification, dazed with embarrassment while simultaneously trying to recover from the horrors of her subconscious.

“Sorry—sorry,” she mumbles, pushing his hand away and getting unsteadily to her feet so she can stumble into the bathroom. She doesn’t turn the lights on when she gets inside, instead feeling her way in the darkness to the sink so she can turn the faucet on and splash water onto her face. Plus, this way she doesn’t have to look at herself in the mirror and see the nightmares reflected in her eyes. She stays like that for a while, cool water her fingers pressing into the sockets of her eyes, taking deep breaths and forcing her heart to slow its heavy, percolating beat in her chest.

It’d been a while since she had a nightmare; they’d been bad for weeks after Cassandra, and then only made worse by the whole ordeal with Dewey. But things calmed for a time when the dust settled and she was able to slip into a day in, day out routine leading New Ham. The last time she had one was before the coup, when Will was there at night to sit with her and tell her it was going to be okay.

Harry is sitting on the edge of the bed by her side of the floor when she exits the bathroom. The room is still dark, but her eyes have adjusted some by now and she can see the faint glow of moonlight behind him.

“Are you okay?” he asks. Allie wishes he wouldn’t.

“Yeah,” she lies, lying back down on the floor with a shaky exhale. Harry doesn’t go back to his side of the bed, however, just continuing to look down at her. Part of Allie wishes it wasn’t so dark so she could see the look on his face, maybe the pity in his eyes, so she could get angry instead of feeling raw and cut open. She remembers the Harry in her dreams, not joining in with the others, but watching passively, that perfect mask in place, as she gets mercilessly torn apart.

“I used to get them too,” Harry whispers. “Nightmares.”

At first, Allie doesn’t know what nightmares Harry could possibly have. But then she remembers how badly he’d seemed when he’d hit his low earlier in the year, and even before that, before all of this, Harry’s father. The whole town knew, of course. She remembers feeling sorry for him then, even though she didn’t really know him as anything other than Cassandra’s rival.

“You were crying,” Harry continues, and Allie swallows dryly. She can’t detect the exact emotion in his voice, but it sounds something like empathy.

“Sorry you had to see that,” Allie mumbles.

Instead of replying, Harry silently grabs a pillow and climbs down from his spot on the bed until he’s lying next to her on the floor. They’re not touching, but he’s close enough that Allie can feel the warmth of his body and the smell of his shampoo radiating into her personal space. She doesn’t know what to think. Part of her wants to ask what he’s doing, or perhaps shove him away, but another part of her — the part that’s still raw and vulnerable — relishes in the feeling of having another human so close by.

So she decides not to dwell on it anymore and closes her eyes. When she falls asleep again, the nightmares don’t return. 

  


* * *

  


They don’t speak about it in the morning.

When she wakes up, Harry is gone from her side. The bathroom door is shut and she can hear the shower running, and she can’t tell if he’d stayed with her through the night or moved back to the bed after she’d fallen asleep.

It’s strange, the way they’re vulnerable with each other while still technically being enemies. Harry’s seen parts of her that no one else has, and vice versa. She recalls that day in the coffee shop before the debate, the look in his eyes when she said that maybe in another world, they could be friends, the weight of his hand on her shoulder when he told her it seemed like a nice place. There’s a certain appeal to the concept that she thinks the both of them can see, and from time to time they even find themselves reaching for it, despite everything between them. Harry’s role in Cassandra’s death, his depressive spiral at Allie’s rules, his part in the coup.

And yet he’ll still lie with her after a nightmare, because he knows what it’s like and knows that having someone else there helps. It’s utterly confusing.

She’s been cycling through a stash of Kelly’s old clothes in the bottom drawer of Harry’s dresser, but it comes up empty when she opens it today — she’d seen this coming, but had forgotten to bring it up earlier, the both of them too caught up in their own worries to think about practicalities. Biting her lip, Allie roots in the other drawers, carefully avoiding looking too deeply and feeling distinctly like she’s doing something illicit, for something suitable to wear and ends up pulling on one of Harry’s t-shirts, folded up compact and small in the back of his drawer, and a pair of sweatpants that threaten to fall off her hips if she doesn’t keep the drawstring pulled tight. The clothes smell like him, a mixture of the fancy soap he uses that she’s become familiar with now, and a hint of what she knows is his sandalwood aftershave.

The exact moment she’s inhaling the scent from the t-shirt collar is the moment the bathroom door opens and Harry steps out, wearing only a pair of sweatpants that match the ones Allie’s currently wearing, and a towel hung around his neck. She stops like a deer caught in headlights, going red.

Of course she finds Harry attractive. Of _course_. How could she not? She had sex with him, after all, even if that seems like a lifetime ago now. It was just an objective fact that she never really took into deep consideration, especially considering his erratic behavior that made her feelings towards him swing from disgust, to anger, to pity. 

But _this_ feels unfair — he’s bare chested and damp and water is dripping into his eyes from his wet hair, which he attractively pushes out of his face with one hand, and she’s just been caught sniffing his clothes, which she’s _wearing_.

Harry’s noticed, too, by the way his brows raise when he looks at her.

“Uh,” she begins, gesturing towards her outfit. “I hope you don’t mind. There was nothing else left.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Harry says as he breezes past her to open up the same drawer from which she’d pulled the t-shirt. He doesn’t comment on her sniffing it, though, or the way she’d gone red when she caught sight of him. But Allie can see a hint of a smirk edging on his lips when he pulls a shirt on, so she _knows_ he’s noticed. She screws her mouth up into a tight wedge, reusing to comment on the matter.

The game they’d been playing where they ignored each other seems to have come to an end, though, because Harry asks her if she wants some breakfast.

“You mean like, leave this room? You sure that’s allowed?”

Harry shrugs. “Well are you gonna try to run away?”

Allie rolls her eyes and then follows him when he turns away, stepping outside of his room for the first time in days. She knows she’s still indoors, but the air in the hallway feels different, fresher somehow, and it’s all the better when they go down into the kitchen. Luke or any other member of the Guard is nowhere to be seen, and Allie figures it’s because Harry’s at the house.

The kitchen is, of course, pristine, so different from how it had been the last time she was in it, littered with red solo cups and beer glasses strewn everywhere the night of the party. There’s still snow on the ground from the day before, packed and icy now where it’s pressed in a decent layer against the sliding glass door leading out to the patio. It bathes the whole place in a bright glow, coupled with the sunlight from the windows.

“Looks like we have toast and some frozen bacon,” Harry says, peering into the double door fridge. “And frozen egg beaters, if you’re into that.”

“That’s genius,” Allie says in wonder. “I haven’t had eggs in months.”

“It’s a trick of Kelly’s. Don’t know how more people haven’t thought of it.”

Allie smiles, thinking of Kelly. She’s incredibly resourceful, quick, and above all kind, and Allie’s a little regretful that they weren’t friends with each other in the real world.

“How is she?” Allie chances, desperate for news about anyone and anything.

“Good,” Harry answers to her surprise. “Uh, busy, I think, with Becca and the baby. I actually haven’t talked to her for a while,” he says as he goes about preparing breakfast, sliding four pieces of frozen bread neatly into the toaster and getting a pan ready for the bacon and eggs.

“And how are they? Becca and the baby, they’re both okay?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, cracking a genuine smile. “Right, I guess you didn’t get a chance to hear about this but Becca decided on a name. It’s Eden.” He looks a little wistful as he says it, like he’s remembering another life. He has a little sister, Allie suddenly remembers. “I haven’t seen her but from what I hear she’s doing well.”

“That’s really beautiful,” Allie says softly. “I’m glad.”

Soon, the whole kitchen smells like bacon, smokey and delicious and crackling in the pan as Harry fries it up. Allie leans against the counter, the smell sending her back years and years, to when her dad would make bacon on Sundays and the whole house would smell like it, waking her up. She would sneak into Cassandra’s room, who was always a heavier sleeper than Allie, and get under the covers until their mom would yell for them to come to breakfast.

Harry snaps her out of her reverie when he sets a plate down on the counter in front of her, a picture perfect looking breakfast.

“Didn’t know you could cook,” Allie comments as she bites into the toast. Even that itself is amazing — it’s been days since she’s had hot food; the meals delivered to her are usually some type of frozen microwave meal that has long gone cold.

“This isn’t exactly what I’d call cooking,” Harry says. “But I guess. My parents never really were into the ‘family dinner’ thing, but Lucy always wanted us to eat together so I learned a couple things.”

“Lucy’s…your sister?” She recalls seeing a photo on Harry’s desk in his room, a selfie of him with a small girl’s arms wrapped around his neck affectionately, in a makeshift popsicle stick frame complete with glitter and sequins. She’s kissing his cheek and Harry, who looks to be about thirteen or fourteen in the photo, is smiling exuberantly for the camera.

“Yeah,” Harry smiles — a real smile, one that she hasn’t seen before. A look of love, she realizes, the kind that only comes from something special and true, like the look Cassandra used to sometimes give her when they were little girls. It makes Harry seem years younger, the corner of his eyes crinkling upwards ever so slightly.

“What was she like?” Allie asks tentatively. She’s never seen him like this before; she knows nothing about Harry’s family other than the incident with his father. It’s almost startling to see that Harry actually has people he cares about in an unconditional, eternal sort of way.

“She was…the best,” Harry says, the edge of his smile faltering a bit. “ _Is_ the best.”

“Right,” Allie says. It’s amazing how things have changed — Cassandra’s gone, but she’s even begun thinking of her parents in the past tense, like they aren’t still alive and out there and maybe even searching for her. The concept just seems so far away that it’s easier to let it slip form her mind, and in doing so, all the other people who populated her life then — other relatives, teachers, all the other younger kids in town — subconsciously moved into the _was_ space in her brain, instead of the _is._

The same is probably true for Harry, from the slip he’d just made. She can see the thought running through his head, which effectively ends their small conversation and they finish the rest of their breakfast in silence, though it’s not awkward. Allie, weirdly, feels like she’s gotten to know a different Harry. She knows so many versions of him — arrogant king of the school, belligerent naysayer, depressed layabout. But never this Harry, who feels private and close to the chest.

When it hits mid-morning, Harry leaves for the day, off to do whatever he does as the co-mayor. Surprisingly, it’s Shoe instead of Luke who comes to guard the bedroom door today, but Allie doesn’t make a comment on it. Perhaps Luke has finally been freed of the burden of having to face his sins every day. Good for him.

Before he leaves, Harry looks like he wants to say something to her. He opens his mouth, fingers tapping on the edge of the doorframe, but seems to think better of it after glancing at her, and then briefly at Shoe. He looks kind of sad and reluctant in a way that Allie can’t put her finger on. 

“Bye,” he says quietly instead, shutting the door behind him.

The silence that she’s become so accustomed to gives her plenty of opportunity to think about it, and about Harry. They’d managed to spend quite a pleasant morning together and the more she examines it, the more she realizes that she doesn’t really hate him.

She did, for a while, after Cassandra’s death, and she knows she’s justified in having done so. But Allie knows that had taken its toll on Harry, too — he tried to apologize, she dimly remembers, sounding choked and unsure in the blue light of her living room the day after she shot Dewey. It was so easy to dismiss him, then, as the last person in the world she wanted to hear from. And then she saw how he was after he stopped showing up for work, and any of the residual hate melted away in the wake of how utterly hopeless and sad he’d seemed.

Even now, he still seems sad around the edges, tortured in a way that’s hard to identify, echoed in those nights he comes back drunk and they don’t speak, or just before, tapping his fingers against the frame and trying to find the right words to say to her.

Maybe Allie’s just exceptionally good at compartmentalizing. She’s mad at him, she wants to make peace with him, and she can split up those parts of herself into tiny containers, saving them for when the situation seems to call for it, each one responding to appropriate versions of Harry, like his mask. She might hate that part of him the most.

In the afternoon, Allie examines some more of Harry’s bookshelf and finds a vintage turntable along with a small collection of vinyls that she pulls out and sets onto the desk. She doesn’t recognize a lot of the records, other than a few names she can pick out as crooners, because her mom had also liked them and would always play them around Christmastime. Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Sammy Davis Jr. Interesting, and not what she’d expected at all from someone like Harry. She picks one at random and, not really knowing what she’s doing, sets up the turntable.

When Harry returns that evening, he’s holding a bottle of scotch and two glasses. Allie has her feet propped up on top of the desk, caught in the middle of _Slaughterhouse Five_ , with music playing softly from the turntable on the desk.

Harry looks surprised to see the record player out, setting the bottle and glasses down next to it and picking up some of the vinyls to flip through.

“That’s an idea,” he says, fingers playing at the edge of the clear turntable lid.

“You have quite a collection,” Allie says, uncrossing her legs and setting the book down. “Very interesting taste. A little different from — what was playing at your party? Doja Cat, if I’m remembering correctly?”

Harry chuckles. “They were my dad’s. The player was, too. I moved all this into my room after, you know. Never thought to play them before, though.”

“Ah,” Allie says sheepishly, feeling bad now for having gone through his things. “Sorry, I didn’t know.”

Harry’s never spoken about his father before, in the time she’s known him. But everyone knows about what happened — the accident, the police report, everything after had fed town gossip for weeks. She has no idea if Harry and his father were close or not, and she doesn’t want to ask, though he seems to think of him fondly from the way he touches the turntable, almost reverently. 

“No, it’s okay,” Harry says. “It’s nice.”

“The books your dad’s too?” Allie says, gesturing over to the shelf, taking a tentative chance. Harry so seldom offers this side of himself, like this morning when he spoke about Lucy, and she’s afraid of making him retreat into himself.

“Yeah. He loved the old American shit, I guess. With books, too, I’m sure you can tell. I’m more of a Shakespeare guy myself, but. Some of them are pretty good,” Harry says, poking the spine of the Vonnegut that’s facedown on the desk. “Your thoughts?”

“It’s pretty interesting,” Allie says, nodding at the book. “Cassandra read it last year for AP Lit. Which I guess you did too. But the concept is a little on the nose, don’t you think? Getting unstuck in time. Wonder if that’s what happened to us.”

Harry just hums, looking pensively back at the turntable. He looks sad, again, hair curling over his forehead and eyes shadowed.

“What’s that for?” Allie asks, gesturing at the scotch.

“Ah,” Harry says, standing up straight and grabbing the bottle. He pours a modest amount into each of the two glasses and hands her one. “We’re celebrating.”

“We are?” Allie says. ”What, did I forget your birthday or something?”

Harry cracks a smile, the corner of his mouth lifting just so, and shakes his head. “My resignation,” he says, and then clinks his glass against hers and downs the drink in one go.

Allie’s stunned. “Your _what?_ ” she asks, dumbfounded, glass still in hand. “You resigned?”

Harry shutters off, clearly not wanting to talk about it. “I was never really the mayor to begin with,” he mutters. “Might as well make it official.”

Allie doesn’t know what to say. Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it most certainly wasn’t _that_. Her mouth hangs open slightly, and for lack of anything else to do she takes a sip of the scotch. It burns going down, tasting awful and expensive, but immediately there’s a warm buzz radiating from her stomach as the drink settles.

“You ever think,” Harry says quietly as he leans against the desk, just a couple inches away from her seat in the computer chair, “about what it was like when we first got here? How different things are now?”

The light in the room is dim, just a glow from the desk lamp. The record plays on, smooth and quiet in the background. Allie doesn’t know what the song is, but it sounds sad and slow, and it has that tinny, vintage quality to it, lending the air a sense of nostalgia for an era they both had never experienced.

“All the time,” Allie says. “It’s practically all I can think about. It’s like a curse.”

“Like, what if I just — was able to get out of my own head, for even just a second? See the big picture? What if I just realized what a huge asshole I was?”

“You were nice sometimes,” Allie says. She doesn’t quite know how to respond to this — Harry’s self-actualization happening before her very eyes. She never, ever thought she’d be present to witness it. “You threw a fun party for everyone.”

“Not fun enough, apparently,” he mutters. It’s entirely unexpected and is enough to startle a laugh out of Allie. She didn’t think they were at the point where they could reference that night casually yet, even though she’d broken that rule the day she first got to the house.

“You remember prom? Before, I mean. The actual dance?” Harry asks, turning his head and sliding his eyes down towards her. She shifts in the chair, suddenly distinctly aware that she’s still wearing his clothes. Something in the atmosphere shifts, and it’s like the night has suddenly become heavier, more laced with an unknowable energy, every word said between the two of them while the music is playing laden with meaning. Suddenly, Allie can’t seem to be able to draw her eyes away from Harry as he looks at her, wistful and melancholy.

“Yeah. I was in a bad mood most of that night,” she whispers.

“Me too,” Harry says. “Do you ever think—“ he cuts himself off, the thought quiet. But then he takes a breath and continues on again, and Allie pretends not to notice the way his voice is trembling. “Do you remember when I asked you to dance? Do you think…things would be different if you said yes?” It sounds like the question has been in his mind for some time and has only just managed to find its way out now, while it’s just the two of them in his room, the thickness of the night surrounding them.

Allie blinks a few times, and then sets her drink down on the desk. Not really knowing what’s possessing her, she stands up and silently reaches for his hand. He follows easily when she pulls him so they’re in the middle of the room, standing close, the sad and slow music still playing from the turntable.

“No,” she says truthfully, even as she finds herself winding her arms around his neck and laying her head on his chest. He follows along, hands going around her waist, and she’s glad that she can’t see his face. “No, I don’t think they would be.”

 _But they can still have this,_ is what goes unspoken in the room as they sway slowly to the crooning from the record player. Whatever this is between them, whatever they’re doing, it feels unreal, like it exists in a space and time outside of the one where they’re Harry Bingham and Allie Pressman, where they’re just two vulnerable bodies finding the exact right moment to come together in a slow dance.

Allie doesn’t know what to think about Harry, if she hates him, if she’s his friend, if she’s his enemy, if she cares for him. But she does know that, even if she regrets it later, it feels good in this one moment to have his arms around her, to press her face into the cotton of his shirt, to feel his head resting on top of hers as they move together slowly.

His fingers dance at the edge of her t-shirt, momentarily meeting the bare skin of her hips. His hands are warm, and she feels warm too, from something other than the single sip of scotch. He plays with the edge of the fabric ever so slightly, and Allie knows he’s thinking of this morning.

“You can keep it,” he murmurs into her hair. “It looks good on you.”

She pulls back to look at him and finds that he’s already looking down at her. The song keeps playing, but they stop moving. Allie doesn’t pull away and neither does Harry. His face is just centimeters away from hers, and she can count every freckle on his stupidly handsome face. There’s a look in his eyes, one that she recognizes because she’s seen it once before: he wants to kiss her.

Some part of her, astonishingly, wants it, too. It would be so easy to just lean in, close the distance between them, press their mouths together, and pretend that she doesn’t want anything more complex than this from him. It would be so easy. His eyes flick downward infinitesimally, towards her lips.

But then the song ends and it’s like the veil is lifted, revealing to her that, in fact, it’s not that easy. Deciding to go with her better judgement, Allie pulls away. Harry’s hands follow her for the barest of seconds, lingering on her waist, but then they fall. She carefully avoids looking at his face and retreats into the bathroom to wash up for the night.

Harry is lying on his side of the bed again when she steps back into the bedroom. The lamp is still on, though his eyes are closed now. Allie doesn’t think he’s asleep, but she’s willing to let both of them pretend just to avoid confronting the reality of what just happened. It feels incredibly significant, and therefore her first instinct is to push it to the back of her mind, ignore it until it grows moss and loses all meaning, forgotten. The _was_ instead of the _is_ , like their parents.

That’s difficult when Harry’s right in front of her, as is the confusing mix of feelings at war inside herself when she looks at him. She liked him, once upon a time, she remembers. He was a boy who flirted with her, took her in his fast car, kissed her gently by the poolside. She lost her virginity to him, and even though the event itself was nothing to write home about, there was a level of trust there — he was fun and free and what she wanted from him was uncomplicated, easy.

This feels so different. She doesn’t feel like the teenager she had been, lying on that bed after the party with Harry next to her. She feels years and years older, more brittle, jaded by everything that’s happened. The Allie that exists inside this bedroom is different from the one they dragged from her house, is different from the one who led New Ham, is different from the one who grieved for her sister. She wants so many things, all at once — for her problems with Campbell and Lexie to disappear, to know that her friends are safe and healthy, to have trust in the direction the town is going in. She also wants to forget about all of that and wants to be rid of the burden of simply _caring_ about all those outcomes. 

But most of all, right now, she wants to climb in bed next to Harry Bingham and curl up with him, listen to him breathe, maybe taste the scotch on his lips, and go to sleep. 

As she flicks the lamp off and settles down in her spot on the floor, Allie mourns for the part of her that wants that, because she knows she can’t have it. Her situation is already bad, and that would be like lighting a match to the whole thing and watching it go up in flames.

She drifts off to sleep, unwilling to examine the fact that she never has trouble falling asleep with the knowledge that Harry is in the room with her, wanting only the respite of uncomplicated unconsciousness.

She dreams that night, but it’s not a nightmare.

She’s in the kitchen with Harry again, and he has that fond look in his eye as he talks about his sister. Instead of snow outside, it’s summer, the air warm and the sun bright as Frank Sinatra plays in the background. They’re not doing anything, just leaning across the counter towards each other as she listens to him speak, open and honest. Everything is peaceful and right, until she looks around and realizes that the kitchen is the only place in the whole house that seems to be lit. Everywhere else, storm clouds press in against the windows, lighting flashing menacingly through the oppressive darkness. 

“Harry?” she asks, confused as she glances around. The dark clouds continue to loom, encroaching on the summer air outside the kitchen windows, threatening to spill inside. “What’s going on?”

Harry doesn’t seem to notice her concern and just keeps talking, only now she realizes that she can’t hear what he’s saying at all. His mouth is moving and he has that same tender look in his eye, but no sound comes out. In the background, the clouds roll and roll, and Allie cannot tell if they’re getting closer or further away.

Allie has no idea what time it is when she’s awoken in the middle of the night, the strange dream already forgotten, by loud groaning. She sits up and peers over the edge of the mattress. Harry is curled in on himself, the covers thrown off. Even in the darkness, she can see the slick sheen of sweat covering every exposed inch of his body, and he’s violently shaking. Every so often, another groan of pain escapes from his lips.

“Harry?” she says into the night. “Are you okay?” Perhaps he’s having a nightmare; he did mention that he’d gotten them too.

But when she rounds the bed to get to his side, she can immediately tell it’s not that. No, this is real, physical. He’s pale and his eyes are screwed shut, but he’s awake.

“Harry,” she says, shaking his shoulder, willing him to open his eyes and say something. Her mind immediately jumps to Thanksgiving and the poisoned food. Did the same thing happen to him? Even through the fabric of his shirt, however, his skin is warm, and she presses a palm against his sweaty forehead to see. He’s burning up, and he won’t stop shaking.

“Shit,” Allie mutters. She tries to check the time, but the digital clock on the nightstand is off. Harry’s cell phone is dead, too, even though it’s plugged into its charger. “Shit!” she hisses more urgently.

By the door, she tries flicking the lights on and off again. Nothing.

When she pokes her head through the door, the hallway is empty. No Shoe, no Luke, nobody. Just silence and darkness.

She goes back into the bedroom and tries again to rouse Harry.

“Harry, what’s happening? Where does it hurt?” she asks, becoming frantic.

“Everywhere,” Harry groans, trembling. He looks even paler now, a sallow sickly color on his face as he curls more tightly in on himself. Without really knowing what she’s doing, she begins scanning the room for something, anything, that could help her. A spare phone so she can call someone for help, a thermometer, anything. She riflies through the dresser drawers and his desk and then his nightstand drawer — nothing of use other than clothes, long-dead airpods, random charging wires, condoms.

Then she comes upon it in the corner of his nightstand drawer — a small, empty orange prescription bottle. She holds it up to the window so she can examine the label using the scant moonlight, but it’s been scratched and peeled off.

All at once, everything starts to make sense. The hold Campbell had on Harry, how he’d said he didn’t have a choice, his erratic behavior, his pacing and agitation that one day. Even Harry and Campbell’s argument, the sarcastic “good luck” from Campbell. His stash must have just run out. Harry must have known this would be coming, maybe that’s even why he resigned — maybe that’s why he’d been so introspective and sad earlier tonight, longing for something he couldn’t have.

Allie has no idea how to deal with this. She’s not equipped and she doubts her bare knowledge of withdrawal from watching TV shows and movies will be of any use — she needs to find help for him.

Just as she comes to this decision, however, Allie immediately becomes aware of voices coming from downstairs. Hushed, whispered voices from more than one person.

This is it, she thinks. Campbell has finally come to do what needs to be done. Maybe he’ll kill Harry too, or maybe he’ll lie and say Allie poisoned him to justify her death. Out of desperation, or maybe just need for human contact, she grabs Harry’s hand. It’s sweaty and feverish, but he squeezes back with surprising strength. 

The voices get closer, coming up the stairs, along with the sound of footsteps. Weirdly, she’s not afraid and she stands from her kneeling position next to Harry’s bed, ready to face whatever may come.

She is not expecting to be blinded by a flashlight shining directly into her eyes when the door bursts open, though, and she throws her arms instinctively over her eyes to block it out, dropping Harry’s hand.

“Allie?” she hears a voice say. “Oh shit, are you okay?”

The light leaves from her face and she squints, adjusting her eyes. It’s not Campbell after all, but Gordie, accompanied by Will and, amazingly, Luke, both of them holding handguns in lowered positions.

“Gordie?” she says in disbelief. “Will? What the fuck are you guys doing here?”

“What’s it look like?” Will says. “We’re breaking you out.”

She can’t believe it. She’s stunned. She wants to race forward and throw her arms around Gordie and Will, but then Harry gives another aborted groan from the bed.

“What’s wrong with him?” Luke asks, shining the flashlight onto Harry. Under the light, he looks even worse, drenched head to toe in sweat, colorless and twitching.

The thought of leaving him there to suffer doesn’t even cross Allie’s mind. “We have to help him,” she says, looking at Gordie.

“What? Why?”

“I think he’s going into withdrawal,” she says. “Please, we have to do something.”

“If that’s true then it seems like he kind of got himself into this mess,” Will says, no love lost between him and Harry.

“We’re taking him with us,” she says firmly, ignoring Will. She’s made the decision already. “We have to help him.”

“Are you sure about this, Allie? People are going to notice. We planned this whole thing to get you, not you _and_ him,” Gordie says, unsure.

“We have to help him,” Allie repeats, not taking no for an answer. She’s not asking — the commanding quality has re-entered her voice, traces of her vestigial leadership rising to the surface. “Let’s go.”

And so Will and Luke scoop Harry from the bed, placing one of his arms on each of their shoulders so they can drag him, head lolling and breathing shakily, from the room.

Before she leaves, Allie takes one last look at the room. The sheets are rumpled and her nest on the floor looks lived-in. Her glass of scotch, still barely touched, sits on the desk next to the needle-up record player.

And then she shuts the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are so many season 2 things i want to see that i absolutely cannot do justice to, so instead i just decided hallie-fy it all. 
> 
> i've never posted something incomplete before, so please bear with me! hopefully things go according to plan and the rest of this story doesn't spiral too badly out of control.
> 
> if anyone wants to chat or send prompts while this is in the works, you can find me on [tumblr!](https://dystopians.tumblr.com/)
> 
> thanks for reading! ♡


	2. the ones who change everything

In the car, she has Harry’s head in her lap. He’s still shaking badly and part of her is afraid that he’s going to start throwing up all over her.

Luke drives and there’s enough space in the suburban for Will to be seated next to her. She avoids the gaze she knows Will has on her and focuses on brushing the hair out of Harry’s eyes. He looks near unconscious, head rolling limply with every bump and turn the car takes. It’s dead quiet outside and pitch black, all the streetlights gone dark.

When they get back to Allie’s house, which is completely deserted, they move Harry into the guest room upstairs.

“Is there anything we should get from the clinic for him? There are kits there that have Naloxone and stuff,” Gordie says.

“No, I think it’s just withdrawal,” she says. “Can you look into it and try to take care of him?”

They’re wealthy high schoolers who live in suburban Connecticut so no one exactly is unfamiliar with the concept of opioid addiction, but to confront it like this — Allie’s unprepared, and so is Gordie, she’s sure. But then again, if they’re able to learn how to safely deliver a baby, she trusts that they can do this as well. Harry looks absolutely helpless, prone on the bed and sweating profusely.

She believes he can get through it, though — she has to.

When they’re all gathered in the kitchen around the counter, Gordie begins explaining everything. The day Harry moved her from the wine cellar, Luke’s conscience finally caught up with him and he came to Gordie and Grizz. Will had been released from custody the day after their initial arrest, with Campbell seeming to decide to pool all his resources into weaving the story of Allie alone as a villain. They’ve been building a case against Campbell and orchestrating the break out for days now, with crucial help from Elle.

Harry, as it turned out, hadn’t been seen by anyone in days, after one or two aborted attempts to work with Lexie to actually lead. No one had heard anything about him other than yesterday, when Lexie had suddenly announced his mysterious resignation to everyone at the church, and how she would be taking on sole responsibility of mayor. Of course, there’d still been Campbell, who was using the Guard to threaten her. But with Grizz back among them, they’d been able to get Clark and Jason to stand down, especially after Elle finally told them the truth about Campbell.

Campbell, apparently, was never intending to hold a trial for Allie. No one knows exactly what he had planned for her, but they all know it couldn’t have been good. Whatever convoluted justification he was going to weave into the narrative of Allie the Traitor, she knows what the end result probably would have been: a matching spot next to Cassandra behind the church.

As for the breakout, Will explains, they planned a town-wide power outage, also managing to disable cell tower services, so that it would be a total communication blackout. Meaning Campbell would be caught defenseless when they raided his house and took him into custody, which is what Grizz and the others were doing right now. The execution of it was genius, and also incredibly dangerous, involving climbing onto power lines and telephone poles and making sure the backup generators at the school and the grocery stores were still working so their food supply wouldn’t spoil.

Allie still can’t quite wrap her head around the sequence of events that must have taken place to put all this together. She’d been so cut off and isolated, left to her own devices in the Bingham residence, that she had no idea something of this magnitude was brewing amongst everyone else. To think that when she had been slow dancing with Harry in his room, her friends were out there risking their lives for her — she’s speechless.

“You guys,” she says, feeling overwhelmed. It’s absolutely insane that they would have gone through such lengths for her and in that moment, she feels overcome with emotion towards her friends. Her family, really. “You guys are fucking insane.”

“It was the right thing to do,” Luke says quietly. Allie can tell without him having to say it that he’s sorry, and that he wants desperately to make up for it. She doesn’t know if she’s ready to forgive him yet, but she knows it’s there.

“What about Elle? Is she okay?”

“Yeah,” Will says. “She’s staying with Becca and Sam for now.”

“If you’re up for it,” Gordie chimes in, “you can address the town tomorrow. We can send out a message for everyone to meet in the church once the power’s back on in the morning.”

“What?” Allie’s unprepared for that idea. “Why me? This was all you guys. You planned this whole thing.”

“It would look better if it seems like it was your idea,” Will supplies. “This place still needs a leader, after all.”

Allie looks between the three of them in disbelief. “But this _wasn’t_ my idea. I had no clue about any of this.”

“It’s for the optics,” Will says.

The idea of being the mayor again — Allie didn’t think that was ever going to happen. The time this same group of people were gathered together in the kitchen, worrying about whether or not to push back the election or hold it in the name of democracy, even though it meant losing, feels like it happened a thousand years ago.

“What about Lexie?” Allie asks, trying to deflect. She doesn’t know what to think; it’s all becoming too overwhelming at once, and suddenly she wants nothing more than to just be alone, to have peace and quiet, even though she’s had that for days and days now.

“She’s implicated as well, along with Harry, but obviously she’s not cut out for it. This entire time she’s just been upholding all of your old rules. She has no idea what she’s doing. The only thing that actually happened was everyone was allowed to move back into their own houses, which was Harry’s idea. Most people aren’t even doing that, you know.”

“Things were starting to fall apart without you around, Allie,” Gordie chips in. “Lexie was barely holding it together — a ton of fights have broken out over food and work schedules. Some people have stopped showing up to dinner, and the other day the community garden got raided.”

Allie’s already shaking her head. “No. No, there has to be someone else. You guys already did this to me once, and look what happened. I’m _not_ doing it again.”

“Allie, there’s no one else—”

“NO!” she shouts, slamming her hand against the granite countertop. It’s enough to stun them into silence. “No,” she repeats, collecting herself. “Things can’t go back to the way they were, that much is obvious. That might have worked for a while, but not anymore. And it’s not just me — _no one_ should have to have this position. It’s too much and it’s not sustainable. Things need to change.”

It’s a thought that’s been in the back of her mind for a while now, maybe even since before the coup. She remembers what she said to Will, after Thanksgiving: _”People are not fine. They might be quiet, but that’s not the same thing.”_ The leadership structure they have in place cannot go on, whether she or anyone else is in charge. It’s too much power, and they can’t depend on choosing the right person to wield it when the system lacks balance. Sure, Allie tried her best as mayor, devoted all that she did to making sure people were fed and safe and hopeful. But what if the next person doesn’t have it in them? Or what if they decide to become a dictator? Power is too concentrated in the figure of the mayor — this, she’s certain of.

She continues, “Tomorrow, you guys can go to the church and tell everyone about what happened. Have Elle present all the evidence, tell them Campbell’s in custody, tell them there’ll be a trial for him. And for Lexie. And,” she swallows, “for Harry. Tell them everything. We can’t do things in secret. Okay?”

She looks around to make sure that they understand. The three of them look somber, but they all nod.

“But I’m not going. You understand? I’m not doing it anymore. I’ll stay here,” she swallows, tries to breathe, “and look after Harry.” Will looks like he wants to protest, but Allie gives him a sharp look. 

She retreats upstairs after that, because it’s the middle of the night and she’s exhausted. But instead of collapsing onto her own mattress, in her own room for the first time in days, she gathers up the blankets and pillows from her bed and bundles them in her arms, creeping quietly into the guest room where Harry’s still prone on the bed.

“Allie?” Harry says blearily when she spreads the blanket out on the floor next to him, a little more lucid than he was before. The room’s not as spacious as Harry’s, so she’s squished between the edge of the bed and the closet door.

“Yeah,” she says quietly, sitting down on the floor.

“...Where are we?”

It’s good that he can recognize his surroundings as unusual, she supposes. For a while there he’d been barely conscious, completely boneless and docile when they deposited him on the bed, so she’s going to take any sign of lucidity as a positive thing. “We’re in my house.”

“What?” he asks, not seeming to understand the concept.

“My friends came to rescue me,” she says quietly, knowing that he probably won’t be able to string it together just yet. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I feel like I wanna die,” Harry croaks.

“I know. I’ve been there,” she says, remembering Thanksgiving.

After a while, it’s just silence, save for Harry’s uneven, shaky breathing. And then he asks, “Is this real?”

“I think so,” Allie whispers into the dark from the floor. “Unfortunately.”

Harry finally seems to fall asleep after that, and Allie’s glad for him. She can’t imagine what it must be like. She stays up for a little while longer, sitting in the darkness, her back against the bed where Harry lies, trying to make sense of where she’s been, where she is, and where this all is going.

The next couple days are spent in a swelter. Harry is like a furnace, warming the entire room with his fever that doesn’t seem to want to break. Gordie brings her books on how to treat his recovery period and she flips through them while tucked into a big armchair in the corner of the room. He also visits twice a day to take Harry’s temperature and blood pressure and make sure things are as they should be, though there’s nothing they can really give Harry to treat his symptoms. They also move an IV into the room just in case he ever loses too much fluid, though they haven’t needed to use it yet, and Allie’s been keeping an eye on his water intake. In the afternoons, she draws the curtains all the way back and opens the windows to let the biting cold inside, winter winds blowing crisp and bracing as they flush the stagnant sweat and sick from the air.

Her evenings are spent listening to status reports from Will and Gordie about the state of the town. They still want her to leave the house and make an appearance in front of everyone, but Allie puts her foot down. She knows herself, and knows she’s not ready for that yet. The irony isn’t lost on her — she’s confined, either involuntarily or through self-imposition.

The town has taken the news about the rescue and Campbell’s capture as well as could be expected; Allie’s learned that as individuals, these people are nuanced and smart and capable of seeing the complexity of conflict. But as a group, they’re fickle, simple, and usually willing to go with the loudest voice in the crowd. In this case, the evidence against Campbell is overwhelming. Gordie and Will tell her that Campbell’s been moved to a new location for his own safety.

Allie knows the real issue, though, comes not with the arrest or the declaration of guilt, but the sentencing. What they’ll do to him. The Dewey decision had been controversial, and he’d openly confessed to murder; what would become of Campbell, when the time came? How would people react?

She entertains a stream of visitors who come to see her — Clark and Jason, their heads bowed looking properly chagrined (she has, frankly, no idea what to do about them); Becca and Sam with baby Eden, who doesn’t do anything more than burble sleepily when Allie holds her for the first time; Helena who, to Allie’s surprise, wraps her in a tight hug. And Elle, who Allie is convinced is the strongest person she’s ever met. To be honest, it all passes in an overwhelming haze for her. She’s grateful to see her friends, of course she is, but it’s also so much to take in all at once after the monotony of the wine cellar and Harry’s place.

In between, she retreats to Harry’s room and watches over him. Mostly he’s too weak to hold a conversation, but a few times he’s lucid enough to keep down some bland heated up chicken soup from a can and speak.

“Thank you,” he says on the third day, propped up in bed against the wall. “For helping me.”

“Of course. It was the right thing to do,” Allie says, looking at him from where she’s seated in her armchair by the open window. It’s snowing again. The flakes catch on the outside ledge of the sill in perfect white crystals before dissolving into tiny droplets. She watches them melt without interest until wet patches cover the sill, like spring dew over grass in the morning.

“But not everyone would have done it,” Harry says. He’s probably right. This place has turned them into completely different people, more vicious, more cutthroat. She thinks of what she said to Will right after they got arrested — _don’t we remind you of our parents?_

Allie just shrugs, resting her head on her propped knees.

“So you’re really not going to be mayor again?”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head — she’s been over this so many times with the others. She doesn’t want to have to explain it to Harry again, too. “No.”

“I get it,” he says. “I really do. But I think you’re making a mistake. You—” he swallows, like the words are difficult to put out into the open, “You were a good leader. You put the town first, kept this place going. And...I was wrong. About everything.”

“Yeah, you kinda were,” Allie murmurs, and Harry even manages a chuckle. “But it’s not going to happen.”

She knows it takes a lot for someone like Harry Bingham to say something like that. He’s always hidden himself away behind fake bravado, so she imagines he must be pretty broken down for that kind of genuineness to come into being. He probably thinks that he has nothing else to lose — Allie’s already seen him at his worst, after all, because he’s currently living it.

She feels simultaneously close to and far away from him. Now that she’s no longer trapped inside his bedroom things start to become clearer, the winter wind lifting the fog from her mind, reminding her of certain truths she’d chosen to ignore.

Like the fact that this weird, intense, unnamed relationship they’ve somehow developed cannot go on. Of course, Allie’s known that from the very beginning and recognized it when she had stood over his bed and thought sadly about climbing in next to him, but she feels it now more than ever, even as she watches over him as he goes through his recovery. It’s a sort of consolation prize — she tells herself that when he’s better, this will all be over, because she’ll make it so. It has to be this way, for both their sakes.

Harry’s hands start trembling after that, and she takes it as her cue to leave the room. It’s a pattern, these past couple days: the nausea and vomiting should set in soon, and she can tell that he hates to have her see him like that, so she tries her best to leave him be, let him keep his dignity a little intact.

On the fifth day, his fever finally breaks and she looks up from her cereal in the morning to see him ambling down the stairs into the kitchen. He looks pale and drawn but is otherwise steady on his feet, which is a vast improvement.

“Glad you’re feeling better,” she says, standing to gather her empty bowl and dirty spoon as soon as he sits down. It’s time to put some distance between them, and she can feel a mask sliding into place, the same one that she had hated so much on him.

“Yeah,” he says. “I would kill for a cup of coffee.”

“Machine’s over there,” she gestures. It’s probably a little cruel, making him make a cup himself in his state, but it’s what she would have done weeks ago. The Allie who knows what she’s doing, not the one who has unsettling dreams about Harry Bingham and holds his head in her lap in the backseat of the car.

Kelly comes to visit that day; on Allie’s orders, not many people have been let in on Harry’s condition, but Kelly seems to magically already know. She and Harry spend the afternoon talking in the guest bedroom, voices hushed and the door just barely cracked. Allie has never really known much about their relationship, even in the beginning, even when she slept with Harry that one time, and she forces herself not to be curious at all. When Kelly leaves, she gives Allie a tight hug and a watery smile and whispers a sincere thanks into her ear for taking care of him.

The strategy talks with Gordie and Will have finally seemed to have come to a head. They’ve spent days now agonizing over what the next best step is and trying in vain to get Allie to reconsider. No matter how hard she tries, though, she can’t express it to them in a way they understand. To have such a strong conviction for something, to truly believe it as her purpose and to commit herself so fully, only to have it all ripped out from under her, to have people spit their hatred and discontentment in her face...it’s not something she thinks she can recover from, nor is it something she ever plans on going through again.

But Allie’s nothing if not practical and effective. It takes some time to put her plan together — luckily she has plenty of that, curled up in Harry’s room next to the window while he’s weak and silent on the bed, thinking and thinking and thinking.

It comes together, in the end. It takes convincing the right people at the right time, but Allie manages to pull it off after she gets Gordie on her side. Will is a little harder to convince, and she thinks that he only relents once he sees that he’s truly not going to be able to talk her into being the leader again.

When she goes to the guest room that night, Harry’s awake, looking pensively out the window at the dark curtain of the winter sky. He doesn’t say anything as Allie gathers her bedding from the floor in a huge bundle, blankets dragging against the floor as she gingerly makes her way back to the door.

“It was nice of Kelly to come by,” she says, leaning on the frame and feeling the need to say something before she leaves — she’s going to sleep in her own bed, in her own room, finally.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “She felt bad, I guess.”

“Why’s that?”

“I think she could tell. What was going on with me,” says Harry. “She asked me a couple times if I was on something but...I lied to her.” He finally turns his head away from the window to look at her. He still seems weak, but his eyes are clearer than they’ve been in days. “Just what I do I guess.”

“You’re telling the truth now,” Allie points out. The corners of Harry’s lips lift minutely. He seems to sense it, too — Allie closing herself off. Maybe there’s something in the air at the Bingham’s, because already she feels like another person. She’s beginning to lose track of how many iterations of Allie Pressman can inhabit her lone body.

“Figured it was about time,” Harry replies. Then he turns his head to gaze out the window once more, and Allie retreats back to her bedroom. 

  


* * *

  


The crowd that gathers to see Allie at the church is perhaps the largest she’s seen thus far, maybe every single one of them there jammed into the pews and leaning against the walls. Not even this many people showed up for Dewey’s trial, or for Cassandra’s funeral. She shifts on her feet, jitters up and down her spine, and has no idea how she ever got used to this part of the job — countless eyes on her, scrutinizing her every word and move.

“Okay guys,” she says when the murmuring in the crowd finally quiets down and everyone’s looking at her. “I know…that a lot has happened in a really short period of time.” She pauses for a moment, finding that she needs to steel her voice. Okay, she can do this. “But there are a few more changes that we’re all going to have to adjust to. I’m sure by now that you’ve all had the chance to review and discuss the case put forth against Campbell, Harry, and Lexie so…obviously, they’re not going to be in charge anymore.”

“I’m not here to talk about that, though” she continues, finding her voice along the way. “I’m here to talk about the only thing I’ve ever really been concerned about, which is how we as a town can move forward. And I think,” she takes a breath, “that it’s clear that something’s not working. So, to answer the question I’m sure everyone’s thinking about: I’m not going to be the mayor again.”

There's a wave of hushed whispering that ripples through the crowd, but Allie holds up a hand to signal that she’s not done. “In fact, New Ham isn’t going to have a mayor anymore.” The whispers grow into a buzz; people are shocked, and rightfully so. Probably no one saw this coming, so she gives them another few seconds to whisper among themselves. When she continues, Allie raises her voice slightly so she can be heard over the commotion. “From now on, all matters of governance are going to be decided by a town council, democratically. For the sake of keeping things fair, neither Harry, Lexie, nor myself will be allowed on the council.  
We’ve chosen someone to preside over the council just for the next few months to get us through the winter and the oncoming food shortage, and then in the summer, we’re going to hold proper elections. For now, the _most_ important thing is survival: we have a chance, thanks to Grizz and his team, but we _have_ to work together until then, or else we’ll never get through. So save all your coups and political takeovers for next year, when we know we’re not all going to starve to death.”

A few people chuckle at that, which is a good sign as far as Allie’s concerned.

“So uh, without further ado: your presiding council member is...Helena,” Allie finally says, gesturing to where Helena is seated in the front pew.

Helena had been an easy choice, all things considered. She has moral authority in town, and everyone knew she didn’t agree with Allie on everything. She’s level-headed, smart, listens to reason, and, most importantly, has actual ideas for the town and how things can be done; the same couldn’t be said for Harry or Lexie. Convincing her to do it had been the tricky part, but even Luke had thought it was a good idea. Allie suspects he may have played the biggest part in getting Helena to come around, beyond Allie’s careful explanations to her that it wasn’t like the mayor position, not really, because Helena had no intrinsic power on her own without the other council members.

As Helena stands and ascends the steps to the raised platform stage, Allie fades into the background, stepping off to the side with relief. Her job is done; Helena does the rest of the talking. She’s gotten a real knack for it after countless Sunday services, and Allie thinks the crowd is taking it well. No one is interrupting her or yelling rude things, which is a plus. She feels exhausted already, and at her side, Will bumps her elbow with his to tell her _good job_.

Helena explains that the council will be five total people consisting of herself and four others who have already agreed to the job: Gordie, Gretchen, Mickey, and Bean. Gordie, because it can’t be helped; without his work lists and logistical planning, the town might actually stop working. The others because of their lack of involvement in any of the previous committees and political alliances, as well as their proven commitment to the good of the town. There’s a brief moment of whispering and surprised glances going around the pews, but Allie thinks people aren’t hostile to the idea.

“Remember, this is only for the next five or six months. We’re just trying to come up with the best solution to address everything that’s happened lately while also prioritizing our own survival, through the winter at least. After that, we can hold a proper election. Until then, for the most part, things are going to stay the same — we’re going to be rationing food, meals will be communal in the cafeteria, and everyone has to report to their assigned work schedule,” Helena says. She’s already doing a great job, carrying herself with the air of leadership.

She continues, “But there are a few changes we thought would be a good idea to implement right away. Effective immediately, the weekly town hall meetings are going to be converted to public discussion forums, where you guys are welcome to bring your ideas and criticisms directly to us. Work lists are also going to be switching to a three-week rotational basis, as originally planned under Cassandra. We’ve also decided that people will be allowed to stay in their own houses, if they wish, or remain in communal living quarters if all their housemates agree.”

Allie had been reluctant to let that one happen, but she knows it’s a small thing that would keep people happy. Plus, there’s the matter of Kelly’s revelation about the bus driver that she’d all but forgotten about amongst the craziness of the past few weeks. If it’s true that they’ve been sent here because of something their parents did, then there’s no real reason to suspect that things like electricity and gas will stop working as normal. It was a deliberate act by whoever the bus driver was, done with intention and purpose and Allie can’t imagine that would involve leaving them without power randomly after seven months. She never says this aloud; it sounds too eerie and supernatural and scares her if she thinks too hard about it.

“As for the coup and those involved…we’re going to set a date for Campbell’s formal trial, followed by his sentencing. In the meantime, he’s being kept in a secure location,” Helena says. Allie perks up from her thoughts then — she didn’t know that they were planning to address this today, so all this is new information for her. She’d made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with the trial procedures for anyone involved in the coup. Doing it once tore her apart; she refuses to have that on her conscience again. Helena must have decided to move forward with this part on her own; the council have already begun having preliminary meetings with each other to feel out the ropes. “As for his punishment if he’s found guilty—“ few people in the crowd roll their eyes, and Allie can spot Elle shifting uncomfortably in her seat at the end of the first row “—we’re going to have a vote, all of us, on a number of sentencing options. Majority will win. That way everyone is involved in the process.”

“In the matter of Lexie and Harry,” Helena continues, folding her hands in front of her, “they’re not going to be detained right now, since it’s pretty clear that they were coerced by Campbell. Instead they’re going to be put on parole, essentially, monitored and watched at all times until...until they can be trusted again. The council has assigned designated officers to keep an eye on them and report any suspicious activity to the council immediately. For Lexie, Grizz will be monitoring you.”

From her spot in the back of the church, flanked on either size by Luke and Grizz — Clark and Jason are purposefully put nowhere near her — Lexie wraps her arms around herself and gives Grizz a look, but otherwise says nothing. She seems defeated, smaller, and a more vicious part of Allie hopes she realizes what she’s done by throwing the world’s most petulant temper tantrum. Another part of her can relate all too well and remembers the look in Lexie’s eye of fear and uncertainty when Allie had said to her, _”That’s how fast it happens.”_

“For Harry—“ at this, people start muttering amongst themselves, noticing for perhaps the first time that he’s not even present at this meeting “—Allie, you’ll be keeping watch.”

Allie feels her jaw go slack for a second before she snaps it shut. No one told her about this — _no one asked_ — but the absolute last thing she wants to do right now is cause a scene in the middle of a transition of power, when everything is so delicate and their livelihoods literally hang in the balance. There’s a hard look in Helena’s eyes, and Allie realizes that this must have been purposeful. Helena must have known that Allie would have refused if asked in private beforehand; doing it out in public, on stage in front of every other person in town makes it so that she can’t say no, lest she openly challenge and thereby undermine the authority that she had a hand in setting up. It’s a calculated and perfectly executed move on Helena’s part. Though she’s mentally cursing, Allie immediately knows she made the right choice in Helena to oversee the transition and the council.

All this runs through her head in a matter of split seconds and, without feeling like she has much of a choice, Allie nods tersely.

“Good,” Helena says. “Now let me make this clear to everyone: they do _not_ have the power to enforce rules or punish anyone for anything. Their only responsibility is to observe their parolees and report any irregularities to the council. Is that understood?”

No one says anything, so it must be.

“Good,” Helena says, satisfied. “Now, you’re all free to go home, thanks for coming today. We’re going to be dropping off leaflets at every household later today that outlines in further detail the new rules and processes in place for everything, and if you have any questions or issues feel free to bring them up at the next public forum.”

Allie waits in the wings off the side of the stage as the crowd thins, filtering out in groups. She wants to have words with Helena, but she and the other council members are huddled together discussing things amongst themselves. She’s reluctant to interrupt them and has to remind herself that this is what she wanted — to be on the outside, to have no more connection to the town’s governance.

“Did you know about this?” she asks, turning to Will, who is still leaning against the church wall by her side. 

He shakes his head, lips twisting wryly. Allie knows he’s not been happy with her lately, with her decision to step down and all. And she knows that he certainly doesn’t appreciate how she’s spending so much time with Harry lately; the two of them have never pretended to like each other. She wants to tell him that there’s nothing going on there, and that most of the time she escapes to Harry’s room because it’s where she can best think in peace and quiet. Harry doesn’t demand things of her like Will does, nor does he question her judgement so often because he knows he’d lose that argument in a heartbeat.

But it never gets mentioned; Allie keeps her cards close to the vest now, plus saying it out loud, even to Will, gives it a tangible quality that she’d rather not attribute to it. Now that Harry’s steadily on track to recovery, though, it’s going to end anyways.

“Harry’s not going to be happy about this,” she mutters, just for something to say, just because she’s thinking about him.

“You sure about that one?” Will asks sarcastically. “Don’t think he’ll mind all that much if you ask me.”

Allie rolls her eyes. “So what are you going to do?” she asks, turning her body to face him fully. Helena obviously is not going to make time for her, and she can tell that it’s going to be a useless attempt anyways. There’s nothing productive to be had by getting upset at Helena’s ambush; she can’t go back and change it retroactively or else it would look bad. There’s nothing to do but move on. “I mean, about the new rules. Where you can stay.”

Ever since she moved back into her own house, Will has been disappearing at night, along with all the others who used to live there. Allie only learned later on that, at first, no one was allowed inside the Pressman residence on Campbell’s orders, and then eventually most of the people who had lived there dispersed off into their own homes, or in small groups to stay with one another. Will’s apparently been staying with Gordie and Bean, so it’s truly just her and Harry in the house at night. She feels more than a little guilty about this; Will struggled for so long for a sense of place to call home, and she hates that he might be going through that again.

“You know you’re more than welcome to come back,” Allie says, meaning it. No matter what, Will is still her best friend. “It’s your home too.”

Will gives her a measured look. “Actually,” he says, “I’m uh, gonna take one of the empty houses. Not the same one on Carlyle, one of the smaller ones. I think I just…need a place to call my own, you know?”

Allie nods sympathetically; so much has happened since the first time he tried to pick out a house. It feels different now, and the significance of having a home of one's own is something she doesn’t want to deny him, though she’s sad that he doesn’t have that at the Pressman’s anymore.

“Besides,” he mutters under his breath, “there might be one too many of us if I stay.”

Will leaves without saying much else after that — managing the kitchen has taken on a whole new weight of responsibility after the knowledge of their quickly pending food shortage, so he’s been busier than ever while the dust from the coup settles.

Outside the church, she catches Elle hanging around by the front pillar, looking a little lost and highly uncomfortable. Allie hasn’t seen her since the time she came to visit just after the rescue. She knows it can’t be easy for her, this entire thing.

“Hey,” Allie says, going over to her. Elle seems surprised that she’s being spoken to, until she turns and sees that it’s Allie. Come to think of it, Allie never really knew Elle all that well in high school, but she can’t remember if she had a core group of friends or not. She always seemed like she was alone by choice, too busy with ballet to be concerned with other people. “How are you holding up?”

“Better than I was before, I guess,” she replies, tucking a lock of straight hair behind her ears.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk more when you came by the other day,” Allie says. “Despite what people think, I’m actually suited to this whole ‘diplomacy’ thing. But, um. I just wanted to say thank you. And that I think you’re so brave for doing what you did. A lot of people here wouldn’t have the guts to do it.”

“Thanks,” Elle mutters, tilting her chin downwards. Allie doesn’t know if she’s just shy or awkward. “It was just…the right thing to do.”

“It was,” Allie says firmly. “And you’re safe, now. For real this time, okay?”

Elle nods quickly, dashing away a tear from the corner of her eye.

“How’s staying with Becca and Sam? And the baby?” Allie asks, just to change the subject.

“Oh, it’s great,” Elle says, brightening up. “It’s a nice reminder, you know? That there are still good things in this world.”

Right now, Eden is little more than a small blob that sleeps and cries, but Allie understands. To go through everything that they both did, different as those experiences were, and then to be reminded of the simple, important things: new life, the feeling of a baby in your arms, the pure and unbreakable love in Becca’s eyes as she coos at Eden. It’s a poignant thing.

“Feeling a little bit like a fourth wheel, though, not gonna lie,” Elle adds, smiling slightly. “Between Becca and Kelly and Sam and Grizz — fifth wheel, even, with Eden and all.”

She raises her eyebrows, chuckling. Allie had heard something about this but never asked — apparently things were brewing in the Gelb-Eliot-Visser-Aldrich household. Who would have thought?

“Yeah, who knows what’s going on with that situation?”

“Not me,” Elle shakes her head.

“Well, hey,” Allie says, the idea coming to her at that very moment. She’s sure that Elle isn’t about to move back into her own house and be all alone. “If you don’t want to be an extra wheel anymore, you could come stay at my house. Everyone has pretty much moved out.”

“Are — are you sure? Really?” Elle says uncertainly, but Allie can tell that she wants to. Her heart hurts for Elle in that moment, because it’s clear that what she desperately needs is a friend. Maybe that’s why she had gotten all mixed up with Campbell in the first place. Loneliness can drive you to dark and dangerous places — Allie all too well.

“Yeah, of course,” Allie smiles. “You’d be saving me from having to spend all my time with Harry.”

Elle falters at this. Allie doesn’t know if people know Harry’s staying at her house; it hadn’t exactly been broadcast, especially in his current state, but she’s sure the word is bound to get out at some point or another, as all things are wont to do in New Ham. “Harry’s there already? Is he — is it okay?”

“Yeah,” Allie says, thinking back — asking Elle to live in a place with someone who had previously spoken about violence against women (Cassandra, no less) hadn’t been the most tactful thing. “But he’s…he’s changed,” she continues. “He’s different now. He knows better.”

“...you really believe that?” Elle asks.

“Yeah, I do,” Allie finds herself saying, because it’s true. She really thinks that this time, Harry’s learned his lesson well and properly, about the weight of actions, words, and their consequences.

“Okay,” Elle says, nodding. “I trust your judgement.”

Allie smiles. “Thanks. Come by the house with your stuff whenever you’re ready and we can get you all set up.”

It’ll be nice, she thinks, having Elle around. She’s always thought Elle was way smarter and more perceptive than she let on, and they got to know each other a little bit better when Allie had her under arrest in the days leading up to the coup. She’s funny, sharp as a tack, and actually a lot more talkative than anyone would’ve thought, as long as she’s given time to come out of her shell a bit. And above all, Elle deserves a place to stay where she can feel safe, where she feels like she belongs.

That’s all Allie’s ever wanted for anyone in town when she was the mayor. If she can provide that to Elle, then maybe it’ll all have been worth it.

When she returns to the house, Harry’s on his feet and in the kitchen, fiddling with the coffee machine. He almost looks like a normal human again save for the rumpled state of his hair and the lingering paleness in his face.

“Pretty impressive, huh?” he says to her as she unzips her coat and hangs it on one of the countertop chairs. “I’ll have you know, I haven’t thrown up in a whole eight and a half hours. It’s a new record.”

Allie snorts. Harry certainly seems refreshed; it’s been just about a week, so he should be over the toughest of hurdles now, out of the fire. While he sips his coffee, she fills him in on the details of the meeting. A lot of it he already knew — she had confided in him the plan for the council and her choosing Helena while he lay in bed. Thankfully, he didn’t provide any affirmation or criticism to the idea, just accepting the information as it came, which is weirdly exactly what she needed. But the whole structure of Harry and Lexie being on parole, that was new. As she spoke, Allie studiously avoided looking at him, though she could feel the weight of his gaze on her all the same.

When she finished, he set his mug down with a heavy clink against the counter. _Please,_ she thought furiously, _please don’t let him say something snarky or make some kind of innuendo._ She doesn’t think she could take it.

“Not that I have any plans to do anything again,” he says, “but I think Helena’s got the right idea. It shows that there are still consequences, but not everything has to be life or death.”

Allie blinks — she’s surprised he’s being so reasonable. He looks serious, unlike the Harry from months ago who would scoff at any form of authority that didn’t benefit his wealth status or wasn’t directly dispensed by him. He takes a breath before continuing:

“Do you remember, you asked me that time if you thought there was a world where we could be friends?”

“Yeah,” Allie says with trepidation in her voice. Her heart speeds up — she doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want to acknowledge anything that had happened in those days in Harry’s bedroom. They already seem like they were from another lifetime, even if it was just last week. Harry bites the corner of his lip, seeming to debate with himself whether or not he should go on.

“I, uh. Don’t know if I crossed any lines or anything, when — uh, we were in my room,” he says. _That’s not fair,_ Allie wants to shout. That’s breaking the rules, to talk about it out loud like that. She can already feel herself withdrawing, her defenses going up. “But, since it seems like we’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other from here on out, I thought it might be best if we just, you know, put everything behind us. Maybe start over?”

Well. That’s certainly not what she was expecting. Allie can feel the surprise etched onto her face. Harry, meanwhile, looks tentative, but otherwise she can’t detect what’s going through his mind. A week of weak, bedridden Harry and she’s almost forgotten this part of him — he’s not afraid to express himself and directly say whatever’s on his mind.

“I’d like that,” Allie says, smiling slightly. 

“Yeah?”

She nods, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. God, she’d been afraid to say it because even talking about it made it _real_ in some way that she wasn’t ready to acknowledge. But trust Harry Bingham to just come right out and bite the bullet. She’s glad he’s done it, though — she’s ready for this part, where the two of them can just move on and pretend it never happened, the way she desperately wants to.

Allie holds out a hand for him to shake, which he does. Her fingers are still cold from being outside, whereas his are warm not from fever, but from being wrapped around his hot coffee cup.

“Nice to meet you, Pressman.”

“Nice to meet you too, Bingham.” 

  


* * *

  


Without really knowing how it happens, Harry effectively moves into the Pressman residence.

Allie brought over a few changes of clothing and what she thought were essentials for him when Will, Gordie, and Luke first rescued her from the Bingham residence. Somehow, in the few weeks that have passed since then, it accumulates until Harry stops needing to get things from his house. The transition is a lot smoother than Allie would have ever thought — the three of them, her, Elle, and Harry, living together. 

Elle is exceedingly quiet and mostly keeps to herself, so Allie begins suggesting little things like having movie nights in the living room, which quickly turns into marathoning _Friday Night Lights_ , the only show for which there’s a complete DVD collection in her house because it had been her mom’s favorite, or having breakfast together in the kitchen on Sundays. They never talk about Campbell, which Allie is glad for — she’s one of the only people in town who hasn’t heard the exact detailed recount, complete with video and photo evidence, of what Elle had gone through. She personally knows that she wouldn’t have been able to deal with the pity coming from all directions, and she thinks that Elle maybe feels the same way. Sometimes Harry joins their activities, sitting quietly with them, but often it’s just the two of them together.

New England winter well and truly descends over New Ham as the days slide into the new year without much fanfare. They are officially on strict food rationing and scheduling, which means no Christmas feast like there had been at Thanksgiving. Allie doesn’t mind; she spends the evening alone in her room, scrolling through pictures in her phone of last year’s Christmas that she had spent with her family at her grandparents’ house in Greenwich. Her mom had gotten her a stash of imported, fancy loose leaf tea and Cassandra gave her a beautiful glazed teacup set. She smiles at the memory, and then buries herself under her covers, feeling sad and nostalgic.

She and Harry are given the same work locations and rotation schedules, ostensibly so she can act as his parole officer and observe him at all times. To be honest, Allie isn’t doing anything special, nor does she expect she’ll have to. Harry is like a docile, tamed version of himself, quiet and reserved both at home and when they’re out and about. They go back to their original posts from before so much had happened; he’s sweeping up after meals and she’s in the kitchen, trying to find her way through mass defrosting and batch cooking.

“So Allie,” Erika says to her one day while they’re dumping out bags and bags of frozen potatoes to be boiled in preparation for tomorrow’s breakfast, “any idea of what’s going on with Campbell?”

She’s not the first one to ask, and Allie thinks she certainly won’t be the last. “No idea,” Allie tells her, like she’s told all the others. “I’m not really involved anymore. You’d have to ask Helena or somebody.”

“I heard they had to move him again,” Erika says conspiratorially. “He’s still putting up a fight, apparently.”

Allie just shrugs. She still has nightmares at times about what might have become of her had her friends not come in time. Dreams that start as memories of Campbell holding a gun to Cassandra’s head in the church, and then turn blurry at the edges of reality when the barrel points to her instead, then they’re children, growing up together as she observes Campbell kick a stray cat when he thinks no one can see, then she’s in Harry’s room again and instead of Will and Gordie coming, it’s her cousin with a sinister look in his eye.

Naturally, she tries to avoid thinking about him in her waking hours as well. But sometimes she can’t help it; he’s been detained for weeks now as the council meticulously reviews his case and appropriate sentences. It’s a popular topic at the weekly public forums, which Allie never attends, but she hears about it secondhand from Gordie. Their research is exhaustive; he and Helena pore over law volumes, court precedents, state codes and statutes, even moral philosophy texts. 

Wanting to escape the conversation, Allie announces that she’s taking her break, shrugs her apron off, and leaves the kitchen so she can go out to the main cafeteria, where Harry and a few others are finishing up their cleaning.

“Long day?” Harry asks, coming over to where she’s leaning against the metal serving counter.

“When isn’t it?” Allie replies. Harry gives her a thin smile and picks absentmindedly at the calloused, healed-over blisters on his palms.

“Hang in there, Pressman,” he says, and then he goes back to his corner of the cafeteria to finish sweeping up.

When he had suggested that they start over that day, Allie wasn’t sure exactly what he had in mind. But it seems so far like he really meant it — it was like they had gone back, way back, to before they even got to New Ham. Not quite the way they were in high school, where Allie only thought of him as Cassandra’s rival and he only thought of her as Cassandra’s sister, but nearly there, nearly like strangers-cum-acquaintances. Not friendship, but something milder, blander. He’s perfectly polite with her, and she barely sees him speak to anyone if it’s not her or Elle at home. He keeps his head down and does what he’s told and then he exchanges small pleasantries with Allie when called for and then at home he retreats to his room and they don’t really interact beyond that.

Sometimes when he thinks she doesn’t notice, Allie can feel his eyes lingering on her a little longer than necessary, something weighing heavy in his gaze that tells her he’s by no means forgotten all that’s happened between them, even if it goes unsaid. But he never acts on it, so she tries not to dwell on it; when someone overthrows and imprisons you and then you rescue them from drug withdrawal, it tends to create a kind of indescribable connection that can’t quite be defined, even if it’s never addressed.

On the surface, they’re cordial and amicable and Allie’s perfectly fine carrying on like this. She makes no mention at all of how unsettled she is at times at how dim Harry seems to have become. He’s like a shade of his former self. Yes, the bad parts are gone — the arrogance, the cocksure attitude, the selfishness, all no longer detectable — but so are the parts of him that she actually liked. The confidence, the fun, the emotions-on-his-sleeve rather than close to his chest…and the part that could see through Allie just as well as she could see through him.

January, dreary and gray, drags on.

It’s lucky that there hasn’t been a big snow yet, Allie thinks. She has no idea if global warming still exists here on this other Earth, but so far it’s just been overnight dustings, just an inch or two that covers the world in powder before melting away in a few hours. The weather is something she never would have considered as being strange before landing here; there’s no way of telling what the heavens have in store each and every day. Sometimes it’s a sunny, cloudless day and other times it’s pouring rain — there’s no prediction anymore. A blizzard could come any night and knock all the power lines out, trap them in their houses, block the roads, prevent them from going anywhere.

Helena is making preparations, however, adding a public works crew to the work rotations to make sure their main thoroughfares are functioning as they should be. Luke and a few of the others manage to break into the maintenance storage lockers at the high school to find bags of salt for the roads and sidewalks. Like everything else manufactured, though, road salt is a finite resource and they cannot afford to waste it when they don’t need it. So on days after a light layer of snow, it’s left to melt messily on the ground, slippery, slushy puddles covering every inch of laid pavement in the town.

It’s one of these bleak, slushy days when the council announces that Campbell’s sentencing will take place that afternoon.

The half-melted snow splats underfoot when the time comes, hundreds of boot prints headed in the direction of the church. Allie tucks her hat more securely around her ears, trying to stave off the lingering frost in the air that she knows has already made the tip of her nose rosy. Next to her, Harry and Elle are silent figures, the three of them somber as they arrive with the crowd. At the door, they’re each handed a slip of paper that reads:

_Life in prison (without appeal)_

_Life in prison (with appeal)_

_Life on parole_

_Other (please specify):_

The last option has a long blank next to it where people can write in their preferred options. Noticeably absent from the list is the death penalty. Allie had expected this — Helena is the de facto leader after all, but she must have had the votes on her side from the rest of the council members as well. Fleetingly, Allie remembers what Elle had told her, months ago: _”You have to kill him, or let him be.”_

She’d made her choice, then, compromising his total freedom for Dewey’s death. _Splitting the baby,_ he had called it. All this time and Allie still doesn’t know whether it had been the right decision or not.

It’s a surprisingly small list of options, all things considered, but they’re instructed to each select one and then cast their vote into a box; the votes are anonymous. After she does so, Allie takes her seat. She doesn’t sit with Harry or Elle, instead electing to park herself next to Sam and Will at one of the pews near the back. Across the aisle, Harry sits alone in the furthest row.

The church is set up similar to the way it had been for Dewey’s trial, though there’s only one table facing the front stage now instead of two. There’s also a longer table on the stage where the five council members sit and where people go to cast their ballots in the church’s collection box. Helena has her hands folded together, saying nothing and projecting a calm that Allie knows she must not actually be feeling. Two seats down from her, Gordie’s leg won’t stop bouncing up and down and his eyes are darting relentlessly between the crowd and the box with all the votes.

Campbell is noticeably absent. Next to her, Sam reaches over and squeezes her hand. She gives him a thin smile — she knows Sam and Campbell were never close, but still there’s a sort of distant sadness in his eyes. She can relate. Campbell is noticeably absent. Next to her, Sam reaches over and squeezes her hand. She gives him a thin smile — she knows Sam and Campbell were never close, but still there’s a sort of distant sadness in his eyes. She can relate. They’re still family, after all, as incredible as that seems. She and Cassandra had grown up with Sam and Campbell. There are pictures of the four of them as kids together in both their houses, nigh unrecognizable compared to the people they’ve grown to become, but still them all the same.

They used to go to the beach together, their family. Her aunt would always pack them assorted finger sandwiches and goldfish crackers that she, Sam, and Cassandra would feed to the seagulls while Campbell, alone, swam past the breaking waves. One time, Allie got caught in a riptide and Campbell was the one who pulled her out, dragging her roughly from the waves by the crook of her arm and depositing her on the sand. He looked at her with a sort of blank expression while Cassandra and her mom rushed over to make sure she was okay.

Allie’s snapped from her thoughts when Helena clears her throat at the front of the chapel. They’re counting the votes, folding each and every slip of paper neatly off to the side in four neat stacks. Between the five of them, it doesn’t take long. While they’re doing so, Campbell is brought out from the side room behind the pastor’s podium. His hair is messy and he’s unshaven, but other than that, he looks no different from his usual self; smooth and collected, an impassive expression sitting on his face. Jason sits him rather roughly at the table facing the council, his back to the crowd.

When the votes have been counted, Helena folds her hands together again and finally speaks, addressing Campbell directly.

“Campbell Eliot, you’ve been brought before the town today on several charges. Your sentence has been determined by this town and its residents. Before I read it, do you have a statement?”

“Yeah,” he drawls, “yeah, I got something to say.” He doesn’t turn to address the crowd, keeping his eyes trained on the five council members before him. Allie shifts nervously, knowing that these are Campbell’s true weapons — his words, insidious and planting doubt. “Why wasn’t I given a trial? Why wasn’t I able to defend myself? Seems like a miscarriage of justice, if you ask me, and if this is the way you’re planning to conduct this town, then I feel sorry for all the fuckers who are living here. It’s me today,” he says, finally turning around to look at everyone, “but it’ll be you next.”

“Thank you,” Helena says, stone-faced. “Campbell, you have been sentenced to life in prison without parole. If necessary, you will be put to mandatory work in service to this town and its residents.”

She can’t see his face, but she can almost hear Campbell’s frown. She doesn’t know if he’d been expecting this or not, or even how much exactly went into the determination of his guilt, so desperate was she to distance herself from the entire situation.

“That’s bullshit. So I overthrew Allie, that’s not punishable by _life in prison_. That’s literally unheard of,” he spits. “This is just proving my point — this is a fucking police state where all political dissenters are silenced, like fucking Russia or something. Is that the kind of place you guys want to live in?”

“First of all, treason is, by law, punishable by death in the United States, so no, it’s not unheard of,” Helena says back without hesitation, a hard edge in her voice and something fierce in her eyes. “Second of all, treason and conspiracy is not the only reason you’ve been given this sentence. It’s mainly because of the attempted murder of and continued violence against Elle Tomkins.”

Campbell had not been expecting her to say that. He whips his head around, his gaze scanning the crowd until it zeroes in on Elle, who is standing nervously by the large double doored entrance. It’s hard to determine exactly the look on his face — shock, foremost, and underneath that a hint of something like betrayal and, even more subtle, a sick admiration. Allie could see it all in that look; it was like he was seeing Elle as a person for the first time in his life, capable of thought and feeling, rather than as a possession. He didn’t know — they’d kept him in the dark as to what had been revealed about him. That was why there was no formal trial where he could defend himself, on top of the fact that the evidence against him was undeniable. Probably for Elle’s safety, she realizes.

Elle bolts from the church then, buckling under the weight of his gaze. She also sees someone, maybe Gwen, quietly get up from their seat to go after her. Her gaze catches on Harry for a second; he’s sitting with his hands folded against his mouth, looking quietly contemplative.

Allie tunes out after that, suddenly wanting desperately for the whole thing to be over. The whole coup had left her different — more fragile, more prone to random bouts of panic. Not quite full-blown anxiety attacks, but she’s a lot jumpier and does her best to avoid crowds, afraid of awakening the dormant well of something staticky and loud that resides in the pit of her stomach. She feels it rising in her chest now and her limbs start to feel jittery. She can barely hear what Helena or Campbell or anyone else might be saying and she tries to take deep breaths to force the feeling down, sitting on her hands to make them strop wrenching together in her lap.

And then it’s over, people are standing up to leave, and Allie looks up and realizes the council isn’t sitting at the table anymore and Campbell is gone. She has no idea how much time has passed since she stopped listening.

“Are you okay?” Sam signs, snapping her out of it.

“Yeah. Uh, yes. Did I miss something?” she asks, blinking and removing her hands from under her thighs. They’re completely numb and feel entirely unlike her own.

“Did you not see that look Campbell gave you when they took him away?” Will asks. “It was fucking creepy. I don’t care where they’re holding him, I don’t feel fuckin’ safe knowing he’s still around.”

“They suggested banishment at one of the public forums,” Sam signs. “But too hard to enforce.”

Allie’s glad she missed that part. The church is mostly empty now, people having quickly made their exit now that the show’s over, likely so they can go back home and gossip about it freely the way they want to.

“You feeling okay?” Grizz asks her, putting a hand by her elbow. “You want me to walk home with you?”

“No, that’s okay,” she says, lifting a hand to fidget with the tip of her ear, her nervous habit. “You guys go on, I’m gonna hang back for it a bit.”

They exchange looks with one another; Allie’s never been spiritual or religious in her life, not even the ambiguous way people here have become after months of Helena’s sermons on the general, non-denominational concept of faith. She waits until they’re gone to get up from the pew, jamming her hat back on over her head.

Surprisingly, when she sloshes her way round the back of the church to the small plot of land where Cassandra is buried, she’s not the only one.

Harry is there, leaning against the white paneled facade of the church, looking pensively at the simple wooden cross staked into the ground to mark Cassandra’s spot. He looks up when he hears Allie approaching.

“What are you doing?” Allie asks. This is the first time she’s been back here to see Cassandra’s grave since the day they buried her, when she scattered the first handful of dirt over the white sheet that covered her sister’s body.

“I, uh — sorry. I just wanted a place to think,” Harry says, rubbing the back of his head. “I’m not a creep, I don’t come here all the time,” he clarifies.

“It’s okay,” Allie says, coming over to lean next to him. She wraps her arms around herself, wishing her coat was warmer, wishing the sky wasn’t just an overcast of white and gray. It strikes her, that the both of them had chosen to come to this spot to escape into their thoughts for a while. “Although, you’re not really supposed to go anywhere I don’t know about, you know,” she mentions, trying to lighten the mood, no real threat behind her tone.

Harry takes a look at her — a real look, the kind he hasn’t given her in weeks. Not just a polite acknowledgement, but the kind where he’s _seeing_ her. She’s not expecting what he says next.

“I used to get panic attacks when we first got here. I mean, I’ve had them for a while, since before. But when we got here they got pretty bad,” he says. “I guess you could say that’s how it got started, with my — my problem. I was alone, you know. No one there to help me through it.”

Allie turns towards him. He’s looking down at the small, slush-covered mound that signifies all that’s left of Cassandra in the worldly realm. She’s simultaneously comforted and unsettled that he’s able to read her so easily and immediately tell that she’d been on the verge of a panic attack. Is it that easy to see on her face? Or is it that Harry understands this part of her more than anyone else here, because he’s experienced it?

Some part of what he’s saying makes her feel a tiny bit better. He may have been alone, but she’s not. There are plenty of people around her who will go through great lengths to help her — and they’ve proven it. But the first one, the one she wants that protection from the most…well, she’s lying beneath the very spot Allie and Harry are standing. And that hurts.

“She didn’t want to be the leader, you know,” Allie says, bringing up Cassandra between the two of them for the very first time. “Not a lot of people know about this, but she was sick. Like…really sick. She had a heart defect. And she wanted to just focus on herself and get better, learn how to survive that in this place. But I told her that she wasn’t allowed to do that. I told her to take care of me, and everyone else in the town.”

Somehow, talking about Cassandra makes that well of panic slowly start to ebb away until it’s no longer pooling in her throat, receding to somewhere in her chest instead, and then in her stomach, where it’s easy to ignore. She knows he’s sorry for what he said and for what happened — she knows. They’re way beyond him saying it again, here and now. Mercifully, Harry’s silent, taking in her words.

“It’s like my family’s cursed,” she says under her breath. “I got to this place with three family members — that’s three more than anyone else in town. Now there are two left.”

“If anyone in town is cursed, Pressman, it’s me,” Harry says wryly. “Everything bad that’s happened so far, I’ve been involved somehow.”

“We make quite the pair, don’t we?” Allie jokes. Harry gives a single chuckle, just a dry exhale of humor through his nose. It feels like the first honest conversation Allie’s had with anyone in weeks. It’s easy when he’s actually being himself rather than being withdrawn and taciturn, so unlike the Harry she knows.

She cracks a dry smile as a thought crosses her mind.

“Remember the day of her funeral?” she asks, part of her amazed that she can bring it up so casually. “I was wearing a torn sweatshirt and you showed up in a full suit and tie. With a tie clip. And _sunglasses_. Ultimate ‘weird flex, but okay’ moment.” She twists her lips as she says it. Is it too dark? She barely remembers how she had felt seeing him there, but the memory floats to the surface.

“Ah,” Harry says, ducking his head down and nodding slightly. “I didn’t realize I was overdressed until I got there, you know, I just thought...it was what I wore to my dad’s funeral. So I kind of just put it on ‘cause I thought it’d be appropriate.”

Allie blinks. “Oh! Oh. I’m — so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Harry assures her. “I didn’t even think about it back then. But most of us probably had never really been to a funeral service before, so. That’s a good thing, though. We were just kids, after all.”

How true that is. They’d been kids…children, really. Innocent, even as they drank and fucked and made chaos throughout the town. No thoughts on their minds of life and death, morality and sin, existential quandaries, or dark supernatural forces at work. Except for Harry, apparently; it’s so easy for her to forget that he had a whole slew of things going on in his life prior to all the shit he got caught up in after they got to New Ham. He did just admit to her that he’d gotten panic attacks since before New Ham, and part of her can’t help but to connect the dots. The collection of his father’s things in Harry’s bedroom, the drinking, the drugs, the two funerals within less than a year. Of course, Cassandra’s had been far from a drunk driving accident, but either way Harry had a connection.

“You know, you don’t have to go through it alone anymore,” Allie says, referring back to Harry’s earlier words. “You have people here, too.”

Harry doesn’t say anything to that, but his eyes go from being pensive and melancholy to something slightly warmer.

“Let’s head back,” Allie says, pushing up off the church facade. She turns towards Harry. “Coming?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

As they walk side by side back to the Pressman house, it begins to snow again, the sky opening up to blanket the world in something fresh and new. 

  


* * *

  


Allie and Harry’s next work rotation comes upon them before they really know it.

She knows that the system Gordie put together is randomized, but she still can’t help feeling as though the universe is a little out to get her when they’re designated garbage duty. She hadn’t exactly minded kitchen duty, but the hours were long and cooking wasn’t something she was ever really suited to.

“This feels a little unfair, don’t you think?” she complains to Will, who doesn’t have to worry about rotations anymore since he’s effectively running the town’s entire food rationing and cooking program. There’s no one who could replace him, so his post is permanent.

“Maybe next time you’ll get library duty like Elle did, who knows?” Will says.

Harry had given no verbal indication of his thoughts on their rotation other than a long sigh when they checked the listing tacked outside the high school. He can’t be pleased, Allie thinks. Twice a week, their days start hours and hours before anyone else’s. Their roundup of all the pickup trucks in town that they had access to yielded in only three: Clark’s, Gwen’s dad’s, and a random one that had the keys lying on the dashboard.

Each truck haul is a two person job that covers a certain quadrant of the town, meaning that Allie and Harry hardly need to interact with the other two teams.

“The most important thing you can do,” Grizz tells them when he hands them printed out instruction sheets for the job, “is memorize your route. There’s a map in the sheets, but trust me, it goes by so much faster if you have it down in your head. If you can, try to go out the night before your first haul and drive around, get it down. If you find ways to optimize or improve the routes, definitely do that and let the next team know.”

Harry and Allie look blankly at each other; no one is thrilled about this. Hauling people’s trash all day is definitely not how she wants to spend her days, but hey, she asked for this when she decided to quit leadership. This is what other people in town have been doing for months on end, and it would make her an absolute asshole if she opened her mouth to complain about it. Harry probably feels the same — she knows he hated cleaning up, but he never made a peep about it in the past three weeks, even when she caught him once looking for Vaseline to apply to some newly reopened blisters. 

“Great,” Allie says, just to fill the silence. “Thanks, Grizz. Say hi to Becca and Eden for me, okay?”

Grizz smiles warmly at that and then leaves their doorstep. Clark’s pickup truck gleams in the weak winter sunlight, sitting large and imposing on her driveway.

Trash day is tomorrow. Instead of putting it in bins, people have taken to leaving the bags out on the street at the end of their driveways; the bins no longer make sense, since there’s no one around to operate gigantic garbage trucks that have the correct machinery to lift the bins directly. 

“I think we’re both allowed to say it: this sucks,” Allie says to Harry after it’s been long enough and neither of them have said anything. Harry’s making coffee again; she’s learned that he’s prone to making several cups a day, always drinking it while it’s black and piping hot. She has no idea how — she’s always been a tea drinker, preferably with a spoonful of honey. Anything stronger and she feels like her heart is going to beat out of her chest and she won’t be able to sleep at night.

“You said it, not me,” Harry replies, reaching into the cabinet for the blend he likes.

“Oh come on,” she says, uncrossing her arms and going over to him. “You know it sucks. No one wants to do this shit.” His puttering around is making her want a cup of tea. Ever since the day of Campbell’s sentencing, they’ve been looser around each other, like there’s a deeper level of understanding there. Sometimes Harry will still grow distant, and sometimes Allie feels the need to remove herself from being around him, but it’s like the coating of frost that had grown between the two of them has thawed slightly.

“Wow. What would people think, Pressman? To hear you complaining about the job you made others do for months?” Harry jokes.

“Shut up,” she replies. “Just because I said it sucks doesn’t mean it’s unfair. Someone has to do it. It’s still allowed to suck at the same time, though.”

She puts the electric kettle on and then opens the cabinet where all the mugs are kept. Her usual most-used ones are on the lower shelf, but a sudden stroke of nostalgia hits her when she spots the fancy glazed teacup set that Cassandra had given had last Christmas sitting on the third shelf up.

She was afraid to use it after getting it. It was so delicate and beautiful-looking that it was impossible to imagine someone unnoticeable like her drinking tea from it, and she thought she might break and ruin it. So it sat on the high shelf, collecting dust.

Allie stands on her tiptoes for it, straining her arm upwards, but it’s just out of reach. She tries hopping a little, but she misses the curved handle and only manages to push it back further into the shelf. Suddenly, there’s a warmth behind her back as Harry reaches up and grabs it with ease, setting it down on the counter with ease, his arm curved in an arc around where she’s standing. She turns around in surprise, and immediately regrets doing so.

He’s standing close, looking down his eyelashes at her, fingers still curved around the handle of the teacup that’s now behind her. Too close — immediately, Allie is thrown back to being in his bedroom, his presence on the floor next to her after her nightmare, her cheek against his chest and his breath in her hair as they danced. She truly hadn’t thought about it in weeks, so strong was her willpower to wipe the slate between them. But she can’t help it now, the kitchen counter pressing into her hip, Harry in front of her, so close.

It only lasts for a fraction of a second that must have, somehow, expanded into several minutes in Allie’s mind. Harry moves away smoothly, going back to making his coffee.

“Thanks,” she says, blinking and turning to finally retrieve her teacup. Harry just hums in response, moving on like it never happened. Did it happen? Or is her mind playing tricks on her, attributing meaning to a moment when there is none? That has to be it. She shakes her head slightly as she goes to rinse the dust off the teacup. He’s just being polite and she’s the one reading too much into it. 

“We should probably go out later today and memorize the route,” Harry says, pouring his coffee. The entire kitchen smells of it, and Allie tries not to think about how it reminds her of her mom making coffee for the family before work and school, or how Harry’s using one of her dad’s mugs.

“Yeah. You think you know how to drive that thing?” She gestures with her chin out the door, towards the giant pickup on the driveway.

“Think I can figure it out.”

An idea strikes Allie then — maybe it’s a bad idea, she doesn’t know. Maybe it’s a little dangerous, but hey, they’re going to be spending hours sitting next to each other in a car anyway. Why not have it be a little exciting? Plus she knows that it would probably lift Harry’s spirits significantly.

“Actually, there’s no reason why we can’t take any old car out tonight to just memorize the route,” she says. Over his coffee, Harry pauses.

“What do you mean?” he asks slowly.

“We’re not hauling trash just yet, we basically just have to drive around town. We can do that in any car. Like…yours?”

Harry, from behind his coffee mug, smiles one of his rare, genuine smiles.

The hum of his Maserati sounds exactly the same as it had over the summer. Harry revs the engines a couple more times, probably just because he misses the sound, before he lets it settle into a steady purr beneath them.

“Pressman, you might actually be a genius,” Harry says, his wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel as he backs out of the Bingham driveway.

“You’re welcome,” Allie says primly, even though she’s excited too, to be sitting here. As they start a cruise down the empty streets, she rolls down the window, despite the freezing temperature outside.

“You’re insane,” Harry laughs, but he doesn’t make her close the window. The winter night is crisp and delightfully cold, the skies clear and starry as the wind blows through the car and nips at her skin. She can already feel her nose going slightly numb; it’s invigorating.

The last time she had been in this car, she’d poked her whole head out the window to whoop, careless and carefree, into the night while all round them, headlights from other cars shone and engines revved. Harry had looked at her from across the middle siding then like he couldn’t quite believe his eyes that she was a real person. The air was warm and she was full of adrenaline, and Harry drove, recklessly fast, as she eagerly spouted off locations of fugitives from her phone to him. 

Now, they’re cruising along at a gentle pace. At this time of night, the streets are empty, everyone retreating to their homes to escape the cold, nothing but street lamps to light their way along the suburban surface roads. Instead of shouting fugitive updates from her phone, Allie reads from the paper map Grizz had given them, telling Harry when he needs to make a left down Maple and go all the way to the cul-de-sac, round that, and then bear right to hit Sycamore. He’s a smooth driver, taking his turns with ease and letting the wheel slide beneath his palms, all quiet but for the hum of the car, the wheels turning against asphalt, and Allie’s occasional direction.

The route is pretty straightforward, but it does take a good chunk of time, going up and down every residential backroad in New Ham. A lot of the houses stand dark and empty, devoid of all its former residents who maybe have never existed at all in this strange place. For two people who have spent their entire lives here, it’s pretty easy to memorize: this is the street where Allie skinned her knee racing Will on her bike in middle school. This is where her mom would turn when they had to pick Cassandra up from the hospital. This is where she went to her first house party in ninth grade.

“It’s crazy to think how I used to think about leaving town,” Harry says; his thoughts must be in the same vein as hers right now. “Leave all the shit with my family behind, all the people at school, go to college and then never come back.”

“I think everyone dreams about that,” Allie says. “And then they’re sad when they actually have to do it.” She remembers the way Cassandra had cried before leaving for her Yale weekend, even though that was just a two day stint. 

“Yeah, well, I guess now we’ll never know,” Harry murmurs.

They’ve just finished up the route, ending up at the intersection of Durham and Fairmount towards the road that leads out to the town’s reservoir, which is ostensibly where they’ll be taking the trash out to the clearing where it can be burned. That’s the bulk of their job, other than the collection: incinerating and then keeping the ashes and melted rubble together in even more trash bags at the old park rangers’ dumpster and administrative building. 

It’s not far from Allie’s house at all, just a straight shot down Southbend Ave and then two turns to get to her neighborhood. She can see Harry’s hands twitching at the gearstick, fingers drumming over it as he begins a steady cruise. Around them, the night is quiet and dark, the sky an endless black curtain of thousands of stars and planets and galaxies. Somewhere there, she thinks, is their real town, glittering tiny and distant.

“Do you want to drive?” Harry asks out of nowhere. He’s looking at her curiously, fingers drumming idly on the steering wheel and tilting his head just so.

“But I don’t have my license,” Allie replies dumbly, saying the first response that pops into her head.

They look at each other for a fraction of a second before they both snort with laughter. Allie breaks down into a fit of giggles, cracking up at the absurdity of it all. She’s never driven before, not really, even though she has her provisional license. Other than during her exam, the most she did was a few practice runs with her dad through some of the old industrial complexes outside town and even then, she was a nervous wreck.

Somehow now, though, she’s not nervous as she slides into the driver’s seat. The leather steering wheel is slightly warm to the touch from where Harry’s hands had been, despite the chill that they’ve allowed in from the open window.

“What do I do?” she asks him, both hands gripping the steering wheel at a perfect ten and two.

“What do you mean? You drive.”

Right. Okay. She shifts the gear into position and presses down on the gas pedal and — Allie doesn’t know much about cars or mechanics or anything but she _knows_ this is a ridiculously expensive, fast car and it sings under her when put into motion. She can’t believe he’s trusting her with it, but Harry looks relaxed in the passenger seat, one arm dangling out the open window.

It’s an easy route, just a straight line, and Allie finds herself pressing down ever so slightly harder on the gas, and then incrementally harder until the engine growls and they’re flying down the main strip, definitely way beyond the posted speed limit of 40. The wind that rushes into the car from the open passenger side window is deafening; she rolls down the driver window as well to get some equilibrium as they accelerate down the road and take the first turn too fast, reckless, veering into the wrong lane. But it doesn’t matter; no one else is around.

From across the center console, Harry looks at her that way again — the same way he did last summer, like he can’t really believe what he sees, brows furrowed slightly and mouth upturned at the corner.

Allie finds herself laughing deliriously, the bracingly cold wind rushing in her ears as she drives. Harry’s laughing too; she can’t remember the last time she heard him laugh. She can’t remember the last time she herself laughed like this, just for the pure and uncomplicated joy of something like this. It feels good, the death grip she has on the steering wheel, knuckles white from cold, the car slicing neatly down the deserted street as they laugh wildly.

When they arrive back at the Pressman house, Allie’s hair is completely tangled and messy from all the wind. Harry’s hasn’t fared much better, sticking up from his forehead crazily. They take one look at each other, cheeks pink and lips numb from the cold, and break into laughter once again, fueled by leftover adrenaline. Allie doesn’t know what she finds more amusing — how crazy their hair is, the absurdity of their entire situation, or the simple fact that it’s easy to smile when Harry’s already smiling at her. Maybe garbage collection doesn’t have to be so bad.

That night, lying in her own bed, Allie dreams she’s in the Maserati again.

Harry is driving, only now the windows are closed and snow is falling rapidly around them, the winter wind turned to harsh gusts that blurs white with streaks of heavy snow. A blizzard. The inside of the car is warm, though, completely different from the world outside that is quickly losing its shape and turning into a mess of black night and blurry snow reflected in the car’s headlights. Hot air blows from the air vents and the seat warmer nearly burns her thighs.

“Do you want to drive?” Harry asks her, slowing the car to a stop in the middle of the intersection of Durham and Fairmount. 

“How? I can’t see,” she says, trying to squint through the darkness. And then he leans over the center console and kisses her and it’s warm in the car, so warm, stifling even as she kisses him back and then lets herself be dragged up out of her seat, into his lap, straddling him in the narrow leather chair as he trails a line with his mouth down her neck, his hands resting heavy and firm on her hips and she’s sweating because the inside of this car is absolutely sweltering, a thousand degrees, the windows fogging up as she runs her hands into his wild air and gasps when nips her collarbone.

“Allie,” he whispers against her skin. He hasn’t called her Allie in weeks, ever since they decided to start over. She moves her hands to hold them at the nape of his neck and then leans in to kiss him again, not caring that she can barely breathe for how oppressive the heat is inside the car even as the blizzard outside rages on.

And then Allie wakes up, drenched in sweat, all her covers thrown off. _What the fuck?_ she thinks desperately, because _what the fuck?_

The rest of the house is silent as she tries to calm her breathing and make sense of what just happened in her brain. She mentally recoils from the thought that he’s just down the hall, just a couple feet away from her, sleeping soundly in the guest bedroom right this second. Swallowing dryly, Allie checks her phone — it’s still the middle of the night, but with garbage duty she has to get up in a scant hour to make sure they hit their route on time. 

_They_ — she and Harry. Who she’s just had a sex dream about and now has to spend hours with in a confined space running on three hours of sleep.

_Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh jeez, this chapter ended up having way more exposition than i had originally intended. sorry about that! writing a big ensemble cast sure is difficult, and i most definitely have hallie tunnel vision going on.
> 
> also, a big thank you x 100 to the lovely [still_i_fall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall) who very graciously read over this chapter's draft!
> 
> thanks for reading! ♡


	3. nothing could stop the two of us

Harry and Allie become...well, friends.

She certainly doesn’t mean for it to happen, but these things tend to sort of occur on their own naturally when two people who generally get along are forced to spend hours with only each other for days.

Twice a week, they wake up well before dawn to trudge to Clark’s pickup truck and haul as much trash as they can, the truck bed usually nearly overflowing, out to the reservoir clearing. Those are the days they come home smelling like what Allie has termed “garbage juice,” a rancid mixture that is nearly impossible to scrub out of their skin and has certainly permeated into the leather of the truck seats.

In between, they come home smelling like smoke and ash after hours spent incinerating the trash in a huge heap. That smell isn’t the best either, at first, when the days-old food and other trash particulates are catching ablaze. Usually a couple hours in, though, it turns into one of just pure smoke as the heat and smoke overtakes anything else, too powerful from the huge bonfire that they carefully maintain in a dug out pit lined with large stones.

“You ever go to one of those beach bonfires, down the Gold Coast?” Allie asks while they’re poking through the fire with long sticks, trying to maintain an even blaze on all sides.

“Yeah, my family used to be members at the beach club in Fairmount,” Harry says. Allie rolls her eyes — of course they had been. No public beaches for the Binghams.

“I’m trying to pretend this is like that. Like that this is normal wood instead of literal garbage, and we’re looking out at the sea instead of this shitty man-made reservoir.”

“You must have one powerful imagination,” Harry replies, cracking a smile. “Because this shit is nothing like that at all.”

Allie laughs and tries not to think too hard on her “powerful imagination.”

Obviously, she’s never brought up the dream she had. That morning in the car with Harry had been awfully silent, Allie sitting tightly with her arms crossed and resolutely looking out the window. Luckily she could attribute that to the early hour, since Harry wasn’t in a talkative mood either at 4am. They barely spoke until Harry accidentally tore one of the trash bags open as he was dragging it from the curb, spilling its contents all over the sidewalk.

Things got better after that. Allie’s chalked up the dream to being a hormonal teenager, her brain deciding without her permission to project those urges onto Harry since he’s the closest possible option. It’s completely normal, she tells herself firmly. Dreams don’t have to mean anything deeper at all. It happens to everyone.

Nevermind the fact that sometimes, she’ll look at Harry from across the fire, bright orange glow reflected across his fine features like golden hour in the summer, and a heat unrelated to the crackling flames will settle in her stomach. Or on those quiet mornings in the car, the world teetering on the edge of light and dark before the sun fully rises, when he looks rumpled and half asleep, eyes heavy as they focus on the road, and she wonders what the stubble on his jawline would feel like beneath her fingertips.

Allie’s allowed to notice Harry’s physical appearance, okay? Obviously he looks good, just from a pure objective standpoint. Just because it’s becoming more and more apparent to her the longer she spends with him doesn’t mean that she wants to act on it. Plus, they’ve been over this before, in a roundabout, unspoken way: it’s a bad idea. And they’ve started over, away from all of that, the both of them. She still maintains that and is determined to carry on as usual.

One of the perks of their early schedules is that they’re finished with their shifts much earlier in the day than everyone else, usually around noon, leaving their afternoons and evenings free. The two of them have taken to skipping the communal lunch hour in the cafeteria and going straight home to fix something quick before taking an afternoon nap. Harry downs endless cups of coffee before and during their shifts, but still he’s always tired enough to retreat to his room for an hour or so afterwards. Allie doesn’t know how he does it.

A few days ago, Becca had called her to ask if it would be okay for Allie to babysit Eden for the afternoon. She wants a break, she tells Allie, and Sam and Grizz can’t watch the baby because they’re working together to take inventory and gather supplies for the clearing in the woods before spring.

“You’re a godsend,” Becca says when she shows up on the doorstep, Eden bundled up and sleeping in a stroller. “She’s not super fussy, and there are directions for how to change and feed her in and everything all in here.” She hands over a large bag of baby supplies, full of formula, diapers, wipes, toys, and extra clothes.

“Of course,” Allie says, shouldering the bag and moving Eden’s stroller through the threshold. “You deserve a break.”

“God, don’t I know it,” Becca sighs. “Kelly and I have been so looking forward to this alone time.”

Allie desperately wants to ask what’s going on with everyone in that house (isn’t the baby Sam’s?) but she keeps her mouth shut.

“Anything else I should know about?”

“I fed her right before coming here, so she only needs to be fed once more around 5 o’clock. And if she starts crying and won’t stop after you try feeding, changing, burping — all the gross baby stuff — then just put the TV on and let her fall asleep to that. I think she takes after me like that,” Becca says, reaching over to stroke Eden’s cheek.

“Alright, I got it,” Allie says, smiling down at the infant. She really is adorable, looking more and more like a cherubic baby as the weeks go on rather than the wrinkled lump that newborns are.

“Thank you _so_ much again, and of course, call me if you need anything,” Becca says, wrapping her arms around Allie in a hug. “I’ll be back to pick her up at 8, okay?”

When she leaves, Allie wheels Eden inside and parks the stroller in the living room. Would it be okay to just leave her in there? She seems comfortable, and she’s asleep. But part of her can’t resist, so Allie goes to pick up Eden so she can cradle her in her arms. Eden stirs slightly, but otherwise remains asleep, and Allie lifts one finger to tap it against Eden’s impossibly tiny, button-like nose.

It’s this moment Harry ambles into the living room, yet another cup of coffee in hand.

“Who do we have here?” he asks, setting down the mug and going over to peer at baby Eden in Allie’s arms.

“Becca just dropped her off,” Allie says, peeling back the swaddling a bit so one of Eden’s tiny hands can poke out of the blankets. Harry reaches out with a finger that Eden immediately wraps her hand around, making Harry’s hand look enormous in comparison. “This is your first time meeting her, right?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, smiling. It’s a sort of comforting thought to know that even Harry Bingham smiles around babies. “Wow…really puts things into perspective, huh? Life always finds a way.”

“Sure, Mr. Perspective,” Allie says, still marveling at the size difference in Eden and Harry’s fingers. “You wanna hold her?”

He holds out his arms and Allie gently places the baby in them. Immediately, Eden nestles into the crook of Harry’s elbow, yawning adorably. Harry’s surprisingly good with her, rocking her gently and smiling softly. Eden opens her eyes then, awakening from her slumber, but she doesn’t seem upset, just curious as she blinks up at Harry and sticks her fingers in her mouth.

“Good morning,” Harry says when he notices she’s awake. “How are ya?”

“She can’t answer you,” Allie says, snorting.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t talk to them,” Harry replies, poking Eden’s cheek. “Babies like it when you talk to them.”

“Oh, didn’t realize you were such a childcare expert, Bingham,” Allie quips.

“Excuse you, I’m great with children,” Harry says. “It’s not my fault that there aren’t any in this world, except for this dynamite gal here.”

Weirdly, Allie believes it. She remembers the picture of Harry and his sister in his bedroom, and the time Harry had talked about her briefly when he made breakfast that one time. What was Harry like, as an older brother? Maybe once upon a time she might have thought he was the type to just ignore a sibling in favor of paying attention to Kelly, or having parties, or outsmarting Cassandra at school, but now Allie maybe thinks differently. He seems to care a lot about his sister, always that fond and faraway look in his eyes when he mentions her.

They set Eden down in a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor of the living room; she’s still too young to crawl, but she’s able to move her head around slightly and blink curiously at her new surroundings while making little burbling noises.

“I’ve never really taken care of a baby before,” Allie admits as she prepares a cup of tea, making sure Eden is still in her line of sight. “But it can’t be that hard, right? It’s just a couple hours.”

“It’ll be fine,” Harry assures her. “At this age they mostly just sleep anyway.”

“Becca says we have to feed her at 5, there’s a bunch of formula in the bag on the table.”

“Relax, Pressman. I think we’ll be able to figure it out.”

And sure enough, they do — the instructions on the formula box are easy to follow, and once it hits early evening, Eden immediately calms down from the small fuss she’d been starting to cause once the bottle is between her lips. 

The trouble comes after, when she begins crying in earnest and Allie can only surmise that she needs to be changed. Okay — okay, she can do this. Who cares if she never had to take care of the fake baby in health class because that’s part of the senior curriculum? It’ll be fine, it’s just following directions.

She lifts Eden, red in the face and wailing, from her nest, careful to avoid touching her bottom and brings her over to the kitchen counter. Is this the right place to do it? Should Eden be crying _this_ hard? What if she needs to throw up? What if she pees on Allie?

“Harry?” she calls out from the kitchen. “Harry, can you grab the bag?”

Harry had retreated to the study off the main foyer some time ago to peruse her father’s collection of Shakespeare and Chaucer. It’s been a source of comfort for him in the afternoons when they have nothing to do, and often she’ll pass by to find him buried in the middle of a volume, drinking in the sonnets and plays, always a mug of black coffee next to him. Allie herself has never been able to get into that level of English literature — too complicated to puzzle out meanings from each flowery stanza.

When he comes into the kitchen and sees her floundering around the still screaming Eden, he rolls his eyes, grabs the bag off the table, gently hip checks her out of the way while he roots around for wipes, powder, and a fresh set of diapers.

Allie watches with some level of amazement as he methodically goes through the motions of removing and tossing the old diaper and cleaning Eden up.

“Okay, you wanna tell me how you know how to change a diaper?” she asks, amused.

“My sister?” Harry answers, like it’s obvious. “I have one of those, remember?”

“Well, yeah, but…you guys aren’t that far apart in age, right? How old were you when she was born?”

“Nine.”

Allie raises her eyebrows. “Nine? You were changing her diapers at _nine_?”

Harry just shrugs while he removes the adhesive backing on Eden’s new diaper. She’s calmed down now, the cries turning into small hiccups as she sucks on her thumb. “My mom wasn’t really — she was busy a lot. And we had a nanny, but she wasn’t live-in. So I had to learn.”

He makes it seem like it’s no big deal, but Allie can see the sadness and nostalgia in the set of his shoulders. He barely ever talks about his home life, but she knows that all can’t have been well in the Bingham household, what with his dad and all. But the way he spoke about his mom also made it seem like — well, they didn’t seem that close. She didn’t want to accuse Karen Bingham of being neglectful, even in her own mind, but she can guess that Harry and Lucy probably were on their own a lot.

She remembers last summer when she’d gotten off of her very first shift at the cafeteria and ran into Harry outside the school, still wearing her hairnet. She’d flirted with him, then, but also talked about how her mom made dinner for the family every single night and how she never really appreciated it until then. It never occurred to her that Harry probably couldn’t say the same. What was it like for him, transitioning to this place? Allie misses her mom every single day and still calls her sometimes just to hear the sound of her voice, even if it’s the same recorded message over and over again. What about Harry? She imagines his feelings on his family, bar his little sister, are complicated at best and probably were that way since before New Ham.

It’s a real shame they don’t have a resident therapist, because Allie has a feeling they all would benefit greatly from one — herself included.

When he’s done changing her, Harry lifts baby Eden into his arms, props her head on his shoulder, and pats her gently on the back while bouncing up and down slightly.

“She’s hiccuping,” he explains when Allie gives him a questioning look. “She probably needs to burp.”

Something dangerously close to fondness curls in her chest at the sight of Harry, dressed casually in sweatpants and a sweater, holding Eden while pacing back and forth across the kitchen, waiting for the baby to burp. She doesn’t have a lot of experience with children, but they’re easy to love, especially when they’re just babies. And seeing Harry so soft and tender towards one…well, it’s not something she ever in a million years thought she would come across in her old life. Or in this one, as a matter of fact.

“She did it!” Harry says victoriously. In his arms, Eden makes a quiet sort of gurgle, her hiccups gone.

“I’ll take her back,” Allie says. When Harry comes close to hand the baby to her, there’s a split second where he looks down his eyelashes at Allie, and that same tenderness and depth is still in his eyes — only now directed at _her_ , not the baby. His hand brushes against hers when she takes Eden into her embrace, warm and solid.

She turns around then, breaking the moment and heading to the living room to set Eden back down in her pillowy nest. _What is going on?_ she asks herself, taking a deep breath. 

When she stands back up and turns around, Harry’s retreating back into the study without another word.

All is well after that for another hour or so before Eden, out of nowhere, begins to cry again. Allie’s sitting on the couch idly scrolling through old pictures in her phone and wishing she could play a mindless game like Candy Crush or something when she’s jolted to attention by Eden’s wails.

“Harry!” she calls automatically. He seems to have a better handle on babies than she does, and she doesn’t know what comes next. Does she need to be changed again? Burped? Is she hungry?

“Have you checked her diaper?” Harry asks when he comes back in. He’s freshly showered, hair still damp and dripping wet patches onto a new t-shirt that he’s donned.

“Yeah, empty.”

“Is she hungry?”

“We’re not supposed to feed her again, Becca only said to do it once,” Allie replies.

“No offense, but I don’t think Eden cares much about what Becca said if she’s hungry right now.”

“Ugh,” Allie groans, but she knows Harry is right. They go about making another batch of formula, but it’s useless — she won’t latch onto the bottle, just crying right through as they try coaxing it into her mouth, the wails getting increasingly more shrill and pinching against Allie’s nerves. They try everything — Harry cradles her and tries burping her again, Allie digs out some of the rattles and soft toys from the bag and tries waving them in front of Eden’s face, but Eden doesn’t seem to care.

After several minutes, Allie thinks she’s going to go crazy.

“Why won’t she shut the fuck up?” she asks, running her hands through her hair.

“Shh! You're not supposed to curse in front of a baby,” Harry says, covering Eden’s ears with one hand while he holds her in another.

“Ha-ha,” Allie says, rolling her eyes. She’s ready to give up and just live with the crying until Becca comes to pick her up again. There’s only an hour left until 8 o’clock anyway…they can deal with the crying for another hour, right?

“You think maybe she just misses her mom?” Harry suggests, settling her back down in the nest of blankets.

“Join the club, Eden,” Allie says, collapsing onto the couch and pinching the bridge of her nose. The crying is beginning to give her a headache. All she wants to do is curl up in front of the TV and watch mindless sitcom reruns sitting in the DVR until she falls asleep…

“Wait!” Allie cries, snapping her fingers. “Becca said — I completely forgot — to just put on the TV if we can’t get her to stop crying. Apparently it helps her fall asleep!”

“Okay, perfect, so do that then,” Harry says, sitting down on the couch next to Allie.

She clicks on the TV and goes into the recordings to put on old _Parks and Rec_ episodes that have been stored there forever. Harry and Allie are both sitting on the very edge of the couch, peering down at Eden to see how she’s doing. Amazingly, when the cold open and then memorable theme music comes on, she starts to quiet down gradually until she’s finally, mercifully, quiet once again.

They both sigh with relief simultaneously and relax back into the couch.

“Thank God,” Allie says, feeling exhausted. “I thought she was never gonna stop.”

“You only _just_ remembered the tip from Becca? After like half an hour?” Harry asks sarcastically.

“Shut up, Bingham. I was stressed, okay?”

“Sure, whatever you say.” He begins to get up and leave, but Allie impulsively reaches out and grabs his wrist.

“Wait!”

Harry’s eyes drop down to her grasp, and she drops his wrist immediately. “Uh — you’re a lot better at handling her than I am, I think,” she says, gesturing down at Eden. “Do you mind staying with me just until Becca comes back? Please? I don’t want her to start crying again...”

Harry rolls his eyes but relents, settling back down onto the couch next to her. “Fine, Pressman. But only ‘cause you asked so nicely.”

She snorts and then turns her attention back to the TV.

“This was Cassandra’s favorite show,” she comments after a while of sitting in silence. “She had a huge crush on Ben Wyatt.”

“Oh yeah?” Harry laughs. “What about you?”

“Eh,” Allie shrugs. “I’m more of an _Office_ girl myself.”

“Lucy and I would watch that together sometimes. I had to explain to her what ‘that’s what she said’ meant,” Harry says fondly, smiling. Beneath them, Eden is sleeping peacefully once again. They haven’t turned the lights on in the living room, so the only thing illuminating the area is the ever-changing light from the television, washing her and Harry in shifting, bluish colors, almost like they’re underwater.

“What I wouldn’t give to just mindlessly browse through Netflix right now,” she says, leaning her head back against the cushions. “Not have to think about anything besides what I want to watch next.”

“Yeah,” Harry hums, mimicking her posture. “What a time.”

After that, they drift into a comfortable silence. The show plays on in the background, and Allie finds her eyelids growing heavy. With their early work schedules, they’ve gotten into the habit of going to bed early so they can get enough sleep for the day. Not to mention that hauling trash is a physically demanding job and her muscles still ache from the labor of lifting all the bags and dumping them into the bed of the truck, and then unloading the truck at the reservoir, day in and day out. But sitting here next to Harry, she feels warm and comfortable, mind empty of her usual anxieties as she watches the colors shift across the wall and listens to the tinny voices coming from the speakers. She won’t fall asleep, though — they have to watch Eden. She’ll just sit here and relax, take it easy for a bit, that’s all...

The next thing she knows, she’s blinking awake. The TV’s gone dark, something warm is pressed up against the side of her face and body, something that smells like fresh shampoo and aftershave. Half-awake, she lifts her head and realizes her position — she and Harry must have both fallen asleep, and somehow she’s ended up cradled in the crook of his arm, her cheek resting on his chest, his head resting on top of hers, her feet curled underneath her and the entire right side of her body pressed up against his as they lean on each other rather than on just the couch cushions.

He’s still sleeping, his long eyelashes dark against his cheekbones, his jaw incredibly close as he takes deep, even breaths that she can feel through the rise and fall of his chest. It’s all — so confusing: Allie’s overcome with mortification, but at the same time, she doesn’t immediately move away because it feels… _nice_. So nice, in fact, his arm wrapped loosely around her shoulders, that part of her wants to fall back asleep like this and pretend that she never woke up in the first place. Yes, this goes against all the rules she set up for herself, but right now Allie’s too sleepy and comfortable to care about any of that.

And then she becomes aware of what had woken her up in the first place — there’s a figure leaning against the frame leading into the living room. At once, Allie startles, letting out a surprised squeak. Next to her, Harry jolts awake too, lifting his head up.

“What—“ he begins to ask.

“Wait, no, it’s just me,” Becca’s voice says, and then she flips the light switch. The room is flooded with light, and immediately Allie squints and puts a hand up to shield her eyes from the brightness. “I’m just here to pick up Eden, but no one was getting the door?”

She looks between Harry and Allie, who are still sitting too close, practically leaning on each other, and gives Allie a meaningful raise of the eyebrow. Immediately, Allie scrambles to put some distance between Harry and herself. Becca has a smirk edging at the corner of her lips, but says nothing as she goes to pick up Eden, who is still sleeping peacefully, and puts her back into the stroller.

“How was she?”

“Great. Just great,” Allie says, speaking too quickly.

“Really? She wasn’t too fussy? Was she crying?”

“Uh, nope,” Allie says, shaking her head. God, why is this happening to her? “Nope, she was perfect.” Next to her, Harry is silent, running his hands through his hair and resolutely staring at the old DVD player in the corner of the room with great interest.

“…Okay,” Becca says, sounding skeptical and still shooting meaningful glances between the two of them. “Okay, well, I’ll take her off your hands now. Thanks again for babysitting.”

“Anytime,” Allie says, desperate for the ground to open up and swallow her whole.

“Hmm. Alright. Bye Allie,” Becca replies, getting Eden’s baby bag from the table. “Bye Harry,” she says after a moment, maybe just to see him startle slightly at being addressed.

“Bye,” Harry says lamely after Becca’s already gone. They hear the front door open and shut, and then Allie lets out a huge sigh of relief and flops back against the cushions.

“Oh my God, I wanna die,” she groans, covering her eyes with her hands. The room is still too bright, and her limbs still feel all heavy and fuzzy with sleep. “I thought she was never gonna leave.”

Next to her, Harry suddenly stands up and whirls around to face her.

“Are we just never gonna talk about it?” He sounds on edge, and Allie immediately stiffens, sitting up straight.

“...Talk about what?”

He gives her a withering look. “Come on, Pressman. You know what.”

“No, I don’t,” she grits out, forcing herself to maintain her composure. What the fuck is he _doing_?

“You’re gonna make me spell it out for you?”

Allie crosses her arms. “Well you’re going to have to, since I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“ _This_ ,” he says, gesturing between the two of them. “Us. Whatever’s going on between us.”

Allie scoffs, like she’s hearing about it for the first time and it sounds unconvincing even to her own ears. “There’s _nothing going on—_ ”

“Oh, come the fuck on,” Harry says, exasperated. “Don’t lie to yourself.”

“I’m not!” Allie says defensively, standing up so he doesn’t have to be speaking down at her anymore. He’s still taller than her, but she instantly feels like she’s gained some ground after meeting him eye level. “Because there’s nothing!”

“So what Becca just walked in on was nothing?”

“Yes,” she hisses. “And we’re _not_ going to talk about it anymore. It’s not allowed.”

“Well, I don’t care,” Harry retorts. He seems agitated, as if this has been pent up and is finally spilling out all at once in a jumbled heap — so different from the Harry he had been just moments ago, tranquil and warm against her. “I can’t take it anymore, this tiptoeing around each other, this pretending like we both don’t want the same thing.” He runs a hand through his hair, and Allie desperately wishes it wasn’t such an attractive move.

“I don’t know what _you_ want, Bingham, but you can’t speak for me,” Allie shoots back, raising her voice and stepping in closer to him.

“Don’t lie,” he says again scathingly. “I may not be such a hotshot here, but I still know what it looks like, alright? I’ve _seen_ the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”

“And I’ve seen _you_ look at _me_ when you think I don’t notice!” Allie snaps back, just because it’s an easy comeback, but it’s the wrong thing to say. It betrays her hand, and a glint of satisfaction enters Harry’s eyes.

“Okay, so we’re both looking at each other, now what?”

“Now _nothing_. Because there’s nothing!”

“You’re really fine with just…pretending?” Harry asks, softer. They’re closer now, toe to toe, drawn together by some magnetic force fueled by the argument. Allie feels simultaneously like she’s been set on fire and plunged into ice cold water. She can feel her heart beating somewhere in her throat, nearly jumping straight out.

“Yes,” Allie says, because she is — she has to be, because she’s not willing to sacrifice this tentative peace that’s been struck between them, not willing to shake her foundations and compromise everything that she’s worked so hard for. She tries not to notice that her voice is shaking.

“Well, I’m not. I think about you all the time, Allie,” he whispers, swallowing. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

The look is in his eyes again — the one he gave her next to his pool last year, and then again in his bedroom after they danced, and then, she realizes, earlier today, when he’d handed Eden off to her and they stood close together for just a split second. She forgets herself, trembling as she looks up at him. He’s so close. Just a few centimeters more and their noses would be touching, and she would tilt her head and he would tilt his, and they’d be kissing.

And — she wants to. God, she _wants_ to. This isn’t nearly the first time she’s been in this situation with Harry, or the first time she’s been this close to him, and every single time she still wants to. Even when she’s mad at him. Even when he’s being infuriating, or arrogant, or snarky, or kind. He brings a hand up to stroke a lock of hair away from her face and she — she lets him, closing her eyes. He whispers her name again, even closer still, and she can feel his breath across her eyelids.

And then the front door slams shut and they jump apart like startled cats as Elle calls out from the foyer that she’s home.

“Sorry I’m so late, I didn’t think you guys would still be up,” she says as she comes into the living room, unzipping her winter coat. “I was at Gwen’s, we were going through the library catalogue so we could get a late start tomorrow.”

If Elle notices anything weird still sizzling in the air between where Harry and Allie are standing, now feet apart, she doesn’t comment on it, moving around in the kitchen to get a glass of water before coming to see them in the living room.

“How was the baby?” she asks, leaning against the frame.

“Great. She was great,” Allie says, thumbing at the tip of her ear, trying to force down the redness that she knows must be radiating in her face right now. “But so exhausting…babies, am I right? So I’m gonna go to bed,” she continues in a rush, breezing past Elle so she can head up the stairs. She doesn’t look back at Harry, but she can feel the weight of his gaze on her as she retreats.

“Night!” Elle calls to her from downstairs. Allie shuts the door to her room and leans against it heavily, burying her face in her hands. She wants to scream.

Why did he have to do that? Things had been going great. They’re _friends_. And obviously, Allie’s not dumb, she _knows_ that there’s something there between the two of them, but she was never going to bring it up, much less act on it. She’d been prepared to just let it fade away into nothingness, like with Will, like with all the small crushes she’s had in her life.

 _What if it’s not just a crush,_ her mind unhelpfully supplies, but she stamps that thought out. _Why did he have to do that?_

Her heart still feels like it’s going to beat out of her chest and her hands are still trembling as she goes through the motions of getting ready for bed. She has no idea how she’s going to face him tomorrow, after that confrontation. And then spend the entire _day_ with him? Thankfully they don’t have to do pickups, but setting the bonfires is no less intensive.

When Allie finally collapses into bed, she hears a notification go off on her phone and prays to God that it’s not from Becca about how she found them earlier. But when she pulls down her notification center, it’s not from Becca at all.

_Harry Bingham: I’m sorry. We can pretend it never happened. Ok?_

Allie breathes out one long exhale, and then covers her face with her pillow so she can scream into it. 

  


* * *

  


She’s beginning to lose track of how many times she and Harry need to “start over.”

The next day, Allie sees a familiar presence back on Harry’s face when they drive out to the reservoir: the mask has returned. He’s reverted to his withdrawn, overly polite self, only speaking to her when it’s necessary and never for longer than a few phrases at a time. It’s not real conversation either, just him asking her to pass him a branch so he can poke the fire, or to grab one of the garbage bags so they can toss it in.

They don’t talk about it. When they get home, Harry heads straight upstairs to take a shower and a nap, then he retreats to the study for the rest of the afternoon. One time, she catches him talking on the phone to someone she thinks is Kelly, a whispered conversation through the study doors and maybe even her name in hushed tones, but he hangs up quickly when he notices her lingering in the foyer.

Part of Allie is glad that it’s gone back to this; it’s easier to maintain her distance, easier to put her energy into other tasks at hand, like spending time with Elle or checking in on Will in the kitchen. And if a larger part of her misses the easy rhythm they’d fallen into? Well, she kicks that part to a dusty corner of her mind, firmly blanketing it in a thick tarp of denial.

Growing up, she always thought she’d have Cassandra to fall back on for advice when it came to matters of the heart. Now that it’s just her, Allie thinks she’s maybe overcompensating — determining her moves with way more with logic than with feeling, but hey. They’re living in a nightmare hellscape with no adults and a quickly dwindling food supply, so she thinks she can cut herself some slack for choosing survival over impulsivity. 

Since that night, though, there have been a nonstop cycle of these _moments_ around him, like speaking it into existence caused some cosmic Rube Goldberg machine to roll a marble into place, leading to a chain of events that just happen though their natural courses, outside of Allie’s control.

She’ll be walking down the hall from her bedroom to the staircase and Harry will suddenly open his door the exact moment she’s passing in front of it, and for a second they look at each other and the air is electric before Allie forces herself to keep going. Or Allie will be carrying a load of laundry, the basket laden in her arms and propped against one hip, and she’ll suddenly bump into him coming out of the laundry room and he has to reach out to steady the basket lest she spill her clothes everywhere. Or he’ll make a cup of tea for her in the morning while he waits for his coffee, and their fingers will brush ever so slightly when he gives her the cardboard to-go cup and he’ll snatch his hand away like he’s been burned.

It keeps going on all the way until they’re done with garbage duty and onto the next work rotation, which happens to be home improvement and outdoor equipment inventory led by Grizz.

They need to take stock of all gardening and outdoor tools that might be in any way useful to farm the land they’ve found come spring, though it’s still early stages right now. They’re using the school gym to store everything; there are rows and rows of different tools, seeds, mulch, fertilizer, and more. But it’s still not enough, not to feed two hundred and twenty people, plus they still haven’t cleared out all the gardening and hardware stores in town yet, not to mention people’s homes for landscaping and power tools.

“Once a week, we make the hike out there and survey the land, see what else we might need, write notes about any plant or wild life already there we can make use of,” Grizz explains to them on their first day. “It doesn’t take too long, it’s just about an hour out and then back. Usually about half of us go and the other half stay behind to keep doing inventory.”

“This is amazing work, Grizz,” she says to him. “Really — you’re saving us all, here.”

“It’s kinda thanks to you, too,” he says sheepishly. “It was your idea in the first place to send us out to go looking for land again.”

Allie smiles, but she has to admit, she’s impressed with the way Helena and the council have been running things. Of course she’d been nervous, but she trusted them to do the right thing, plus it’s not like she had a perfect system going on when she was the mayor. But the council have really tightened up the ship, become much more transparent in their process, and for the most part, people seem to be content.

The changing of their work rotation also coincides with the end of the month, the days sliding into February before anyone knows it. The big snow has yet to happen, but it’s on everyone’s minds; this is New England, after all, and it’s never a complete winter without at least one huge snowstorm that ends up cancelling school for the day — or in this case, causes the town to come to a grinding halt, threatening their workforce and livelihoods. But no biggie.

It’s also, Allie realizes with a jolt on the eighth day of the month, her birthday. She’s eighteen.

It’s a Saturday, meaning she has the day off from her usual work schedule, but she’s miserable at home trying to avoid Harry all the time, so she makes no mention of it and spends the day with Sam, Becca, Kelly, and little baby Eden.

It’s unseasonably warm in the evening, maybe even in the 50s, so she has her jacket unzipped and is sipping a beer in the backyard of Becca’s house. Sam is inside feeding Eden, so it’s just her, Becca, and Kelly drinking while the sun sets over the tops of the pine trees and night slowly falls around them.

“Jesus, I can’t believe you’re eighteen,” Becca remarks, clinking her glass of water against Allie’s beer. “Wait, I can’t believe you were younger than most of us while you were leading this whole place.”

“I don’t feel eighteen,” Allie says morosely, spinning the bottle in her hands. It’s true — today, she is legally an adult (if that still applies here), but she doesn’t feel any wiser or more sure of herself.

“I didn’t feel eighteen for like eight months after my birthday,” Kelly confides in her.

“Kind of a shitty way to celebrate, since parties are basically banned now,” Allie says, and Becca hums in agreement.

“We can still make it a party,” Kelly says, eyes glittering. “We can do some shots!”

“You guys have fun with that,” Becca says. She’s still off alcohol, at least while Eden is nursing. Allie nods enthusiastically — she can’t recall the last time she properly drank. Maybe it was at prom? Everything had gone to shit after that and she had no time to spare getting wasted. Even at Thanksgiving, the hardest thing she drank was a glass of apple cider. 

Kelly darts off into the house and returns a moment later. “Here we go,” she announces, bringing out two shot glasses and a bottle of Patron.

“Jesus, Becca, you’ve been holding out on us,” Allie says, grabbing the bottle and inspecting the label.

Becca shrugs. “My parents were collectors. I think there’s some Don Julio if you go looking around, too...although that might be the one I replaced with water.”

“To Allie!” Kelly says, pouring out two generous shots and handling one to her. Allie takes it and knocks it back quickly, smacking her lips together afterwards and squeezing her eyes shut at the burn of the tequila as it rips a line down her throat. Immediately, her limbs feel warm and her head starts to go a little fuzzy.

“Whew,” she breathes out, wishing she had a chaser to get the taste out of her mouth. “Wow, I almost forgot what that’s like. Guys, am I old?”

“If you’re old, then I’m a grandma,” Kelly says, smiling. Her cheeks are rosy from the drink and she gleams against the dusk sky; Allie can definitely see why Becca likes her, and even why Harry had liked her.

God. She does _not_ want to think about Harry right now.

But speak of the devil, because right then Becca asks, “So are you and Harry doing anything special for your birthday?”

Allie furrows her brow. “What? No? Why would we be doing anything?”

Becca and Kelly look back and forth between each other for a second.

“Wait,” Becca says. “Are you guys not…?”

“What?! No!” Allie immediately responds, her eyes going wide. “What gave you that idea?”

“Uh, you guys were literally asleep on top of each other when I came to pick up Eden,” Becca says, like it’s obvious.

Kelly chips in, “Yeah, and whenever me and Harry talk on the phone and you come up, Allie, it just really seems like—“

“No,” Allie cuts her off. “No, there’s uh. Nothing.”

Becca’s eyebrows climb up her forehead. “Well...do you _want_ there to be something?” she eggs on, her tone suggestive.

Allie can feel her cheeks going red from something other than the tequila. “No,” she says resolutely. “No, it’s just…it’s a bad idea.”

“Oh, so you _want_ to, you just don’t think you should,” Becca concludes, sounding smug.

“No!” Allie tries to protest. “No, it’s just—just…” She trails off, not knowing how to defend herself. Not knowing what else to do, she pours herself another shot and downs it in one go, her insides burning and her head swimming.

“It’s okay,” Kelly assures her. “At first I was shocked at the idea, but then it kind of made sense once I thought about it.”

“Yeah, same,” Becca agrees. “I mean, it’s not like he is who he used to be. And you guys are always together.”

“I’m his parole officer!” Allie squeaks, but Becca scoffs. 

“Oh, please. Grizz hasn’t been watching Lexie for ages, she’s like a washed up nothing now. The council runs a tight ship, plus there’s no respect left for her to pull anything. And the same goes for Harry, and you know it.”

“So you’re saying that you and Harry — there’s never been anything?” Kelly asks, in a much more gentle and understanding tone than Becca.

Allie doesn’t know whether it’s the alcohol that’s making her head swim, or the fact that other people _suspect_ something and are talking about it to her, even though she trusts both Becca and Kelly to keep her privacy, but she finds herself biting her lip for a moment before answering.

“Okay. Okay, there was one time, but it was so long ago,” she relents. A grinch-like grin grows over Becca’s face, and Allie thinks that she might truly be evil.

“Okay, spill. Now!”

She glances nervously at Kelly. Were she and Harry technically together, then? She doesn’t really know how or when things ended between the two of them, but she decides, _fuck it_.

“It was the night we played Fugitive last summer. Like a week after we got to New Ham.”

“Oh shit, wait, that’s so long ago,” Becca says. Next to her, Kelly doesn’t look upset or anything, just similarly shocked and entranced by the story — a good sign.

“Yeah,” Allie sighs. “Uh, I just had a lot on my mind and wanted a distraction for a few hours, you know? So I played with him, and then went to his party afterwards, and then one thing kind of led to another…”

Becca’s jaw drops in mock surprise.“Wait. You guys had sex? That night? But you were so young!”

“Shut up,” Allie laughs, poking Becca’s shoulder playfully. “But yeah. It was a one time thing, really, and both of us kind of knew that because it never came up again. And then I guess he asked me to dance at prom, but I said no.”

“Uh, except it totally is coming up again,” Becca says, but Allie shakes her head.

“No, it’s…different. Whatever it is now. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”

They must be able to tell how confused and conflicted she’s feeling, because Kelly puts a comforting hand on her arm.

“Well, even if whatever’s going on now doesn’t lead to anything, at least you got to experience some of Harry’s best qualities, right?” Kelly tells her conspiratorially, leaning in with a low voice and a devilish glint in her eye.

Allie tilts her head slightly, skeptical. “Uh, I definitely wouldn’t say ‘best.’ It really — oh my God, I can’t believe I’m saying this — it wasn’t all that great.”

Kelly draws back for a moment, shocked. “Really?” She sounds genuinely surprised. “I mean, listen, he and I were together for a long time and he was never…lacking, if you know what I mean?”

She can’t believe this is a conversation they’re having. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t like that for me, I guess,” she mutters.

“I mean, I’ve even told Becca how good he was with his mouth,” Kelly says frankly. Next to her, Becca nods sagely.

“It’s true, she has. It’s a rare thing, finding a man who’s good at that.”

“Oh my God,” Allie groans, burying her face in her hands and letting her hair fall all around her like a curtain to shield her from the two other girls sitting next to her and snickering wildly. Her skin feels hot all over and she’s sweating at the temples. _It’s the tequila,_ she tells herself.

They mercifully drift onto other topics when Sam comes and rejoins them, baby Eden having been put successfully to bed, enjoying their quiet evening together. At the end, Sam brings out a cake that they managed to get their hands on for the special occasion, and they all sing to Allie and then take some more shots, save for Becca.

She’s well and truly tipsy when Sam and Kelly walk her home at the end of the night, her arms wrapped around either one of their shoulders as they lean into each other, giggling and in a good mood. The stars are bright tonight, the sky clear, and Allie reflects the strange, strange year she’s had. Eighteen. She’s an adult now, but she’s already done so much more than other eighteen year olds her age, or even adults in their lifetime. Buried her sister. Killed someone. Led a town. Been overthrown, been imprisoned. And yet she’s still here, with friends on either side, alcohol warm in her belly, with hope for what’s to come. And if that isn’t resilience of the human spirit, then what is?

When they get to her doorstep, Sam and Kelly each lean in to give her a kiss on the cheek and wish her a final happy birthday. She laughs and hugs them both; when Kelly leans in next to her ear, she whispers, “Give Harry my love, okay?”

It’s quiet inside when the door shuts behind her, the hour late. She tries not to make too much noise as she goes to the kitchen and makes herself drink a tall glass of water before clambering up the stairs, still in her boots and winter coat.

After she gets to her room, Allie strips all her clothes off and goes into her bathroom to splash water on her face; she still feels hot all over from the drinks, her skin pink and thrumming with it when she glances at herself in the mirror.

As she’s picking out what to wear to bed, she spots Harry’s t-shirt — the one she’d worn that night in his bedroom when they danced — lying folded and neat in her drawer and, impulsively, she grabs it and pulls it on over her head. It’s still too big for her, coming down just at the top of her thighs and it’s probably not a good idea to be wearing it at all given what she talked about with Kelly and Becca, but Allie’s too tipsy to care. She forgoes pajama pants, climbing into bed in just the shirt and her underwear.

It’s still too hot, so she throws back the covers and lies there, staring at the ceiling. She’s not tired at all. And she can’t stop thinking about what Kelly had said. 

_How good he was with his mouth._

Well. He certainly hadn’t done that to her when they slept together.

It had been a sort of wham, bam, thank you ma’am sort of deal, too frenzied were they the moment they reached Harry’s room, too aware of the masses of people still crowding the downstairs and outdoor area. Part of Allie had just wanted to finally get the whole thing over with, and hey, the opportunity had finally presented itself in the form of Harry Bingham, guaranteed good time by way of his reputation and the shamelessly smooth flirting they’d been doing all night long.

She’d tried her best not to be incredibly disappointed afterwards, but it was difficult when she was just beginning to get into it and then he’d given a sort of strangled exhale and it was all over. And then it didn’t matter anymore because the power went out and everything went to shit.

But she thinks about it now, even though she shouldn’t — what if there wasn’t a party going on downstairs? What if she wasn’t just a rebound for Kelly? What if they were well and truly alone and had all the time in the world? What would it be like? What would _he_ be like? Kelly’s words bounce around in her skull like marbles in a pinball machine.

Allie grows hotter still, and she sighs in frustration. In that very moment she makes an incredibly stupid, impulsive, split-second decision. Because _fuck it_.

But there’s still enough alcohol in her system left to justify it if she needs to the next day and — well, it’s her _birthday_ , damnit.

The lights are off in Harry’s room when she opens the door without bothering to knock, but she knows he’s awake. She can just tell; she’s spent long enough watching him sleep when he was recovering from withdrawal, after all. The light from the hall shines briefly over his body, the line of it too tense for him to be asleep, before it shrinks and then disappears as she closes the door behind her.

“Allie?” he whispers into the dark, propping himself up on an elbow as she approaches the bed. “What’s going on, is something wrong?” His hair curls over his forehead and Allie thinks, not for the first time, that he looks devastating.

“It’s my birthday,” Allie says, her knees bumping against the sheets. Harry doesn’t immediately respond, seeming to take in her appearance — she’s clad only in his old t-shirt and her underwear and not much else. 

“Oh,” Harry finally replies, and then she pulls back the covers to climb on top of him.

When she kisses him, he doesn’t question it, just wraps an arm around her waist and kisses her back. The sheets are warm, he’s warm against her, she’s still warm on the inside from the tequila, and he pulls back slightly to ask her, “Have you been drinking?”

“Shut up,” Allie tells him and then pulls his face towards hers for another kiss. It’s nothing like their first kiss by the pool, which had been quick and spontaneous, and it’s nothing like what their two almost-kisses would have been, sweet and yearning and maybe a little sad.

It’s slow and heavy and purposeful; Allie puts herself fully behind it, running her fingers through his hair, opening her mouth for his tongue to press inside. His fingers skate over the hem of her t-shirt, hesitant for just a moment before committing fully to sliding beneath the fabric, over her waist and up her back. His hands are scorching.

“I thought this wasn’t allowed,” Harry murmurs against her skin when they draw apart for air.

“It’s my birthday,” Allie whispers. “I’m allowing it.”

He observes her for a moment, his eyes dark, her hair in a wild curtain around both of them as she breathes into his face. Then he’s flipping her suddenly, reversing their positions so she’s pressed underneath him, her hair fanned out on the pillow as he mouths against her neck and presses a thigh between her legs, warm and heavy.

“Allie,” he whispers reverentially against her skin, like a prayer, and no — no, that’s not what she wants, there’s too much there behind his voice, too much, too soon, this needs to be just about one thing. So she grabs him by the hair and then pulls him into a scathing kiss, toothsome and nipping, trying to tell him what she wants when she lifts her hips up against his hands that have bracketed around them.

Harry gets the idea. He slides one hand beneath her panties, to where she wants him to be.

“Jesus,” he breathes lowly when they break apart, feeling how wet she already is. “You have no idea what you do to me. I’ve thought about you so many times in this shirt,” he whispers against her lips, and his hand is moving and — yes, alright, Allie will concede that maybe he’s good at this.

“Shut up,” she tells him again, this time pushing on the top of his head so he can get lower. He understands, sliding down her body until he’s level with her panties, and then he hooks his fingers at either side of the waistband to slide them down her legs, all the while looking up at her.

Even in the dark, she can see it in his eyes — it’s true that he’s thought about this. Maybe even dreamed of it. Just like she has.

And then he’s finally putting his mouth to good use, right where she wants it, and oh _God_ , she hates that Kelly was right, he’s…he’s— 

Allie runs her fingers into his hair, gripping tight to keep him in place. He hums against her and she closes her eyes, seeing stars bloom behind their darkness.

Afterwards, she lies shuddering and trying to catch her breath for a minute before pulling her underwear back up and climbing out of the bed without a word. It’s probably unfair to leave him like this, but Harry doesn’t say anything either and Allie’s starting to feel the weight of what she’s done come crashing down around her ears; she doesn’t think she can bear being in his presence for another second, for fear of what else she’ll do.

“Happy birthday,” he says to her just as she cracks the door open to slip out into the hall.

She turns her eyes to him and gives a soft “thanks” before shutting the door gently behind her. 

  


* * *

  


Harry already knows without having to be told that she doesn’t want to talk about it. She can tell.

He’s got a smug look on his face when she goes down to the kitchen the next morning just before they need to leave for the day. She’d tried to put off coming downstairs for as long as possible, dragging her feet as she brushed her teeth and picked out her clothes (trying extremely hard not to put any extra care into her appearance) until she threatened to be late.

He doesn’t say anything, just wordlessly hands her a cup of tea all ready in an insulated thermos and twirls his keys around his finger as he breezes past her and says, “I’ll warm up the car.”

Allie stands for just a second in the kitchen, trying (and failing) to gather her thoughts, before turning on her heel to follow him.

Halfway through the drive to the township rec center, where they’re meant to go through the municipal tool shed and catalogue anything that might be worth using, Allie decides that she prefers the taciturn, mopey Harry to this one. He’s still not as talkative as he usually is, but what’s worse, he’s smug. He just has that air about him, all self-satisfied, and whenever he looks at her, there’s a smirk on his face and a glint in his eye that she doesn’t like one bit. 

She hadn’t been that drunk last night. She’s not even hungover today. And she thinks Harry, damn his observant self, can tell.

He makes little comments every so often, like about how the new garbage crew is doing a shit job because they’ve been late picking up from their quadrant, or on the weather — seriously, the weather? And there’s a hint of it in his voice, like he knows something secret about her now, which she supposes he does.

When they step out of the car, Allie does actually notice the weather — it’s significantly colder than it had been last night, and heavy clouds have congregated over the previously clear sky, something in the air pressure low and threatening. It seems like it’s going to snow, one last spurt of winter for the lot of them before things ease into the latter end of the season when it’s just clear and cold and nothing else before the spring rains begin.

The tool shed off the main administration building they have to survey is dismal, dark, and filled to the brim with old gardening and outdoor equipment. West Ham was the type of place where the town held publicly subsidized gardening clubs for the bored, rich housewives so they could have pissing contests with each other over who could grow the best hydrangeas. Allie flips the switch near the wooden door and a single lightbulb overhead goes on; nearly every surface is blanketed in dust and cobwebs since no one’s been here in months (or maybe ever at all).

“Lovely,” Allie mutters, stepping inside and holding her clipboard under one arm. Harry follows close behind her, his presence pressing into her periphery, like he’s trying (and succeeding) at making himself known to her. She doesn’t know if she wants him to step closer or further away.

“This is gonna take fucking days,” Harry says as he scans around. He’s right; there are metal storage racks and plastic bins stacked everywhere, all bursting with equipment ranging from rakes and shovels to containers of weedkiller and pesticides.

“Why don’t we split up?” Allie suggests, finally deciding that it’s probably best for Harry to be _away_ from her right now. “You can start at that end,” she points to the far corner, “and I’ll start here. Cover more ground that way.”

Harry looks at her like he knows what she’s doing, but obliges anyway. They work in silence all morning, Allie snapping pictures of the tools she thinks will be useful and writing them down with their location in her clipboard. At the other end of the room, she can hear Harry clanking around the shelves as he handles what must be a toolbox or some small gardening trowels. She tries to tune out the cursing he’s doing under her breath and focuses on the task at hand until finally, her stomach begins to growl and her knees are starting to ache from all the crouching down she’s having to do.

“I think we can take a break,” Allie announces, standing straight and reaching up with both her arms so she can stretch out her sore joints. They crack slightly and her sweater rides up a little bit. Behind her, she can feel Harry’s eyes on her without even having to turn around. Okay, yeah, time to get out of this confined space with him.

The shed is well-insulted by the stacks and rows of objects covering every available inch of wall surface, and there are no windows. That’s why it comes as a complete shock when Allie goes to unlatch the door and it forcefully blows wide open when she turns the handle, thrown along its hinges by a powerful gust of wind and snow.

The world outside is a flurry of white and already there’s a good layer of it covering the ground. Above, the sky is slate gray, nearly indistinguishable from the ground and air that is awash with eddies of vigorously blowing snow.

Allie leans her weight against the door to get it closed and then presses her back against it to make sure it stays shut.

“Shit,” she hisses, patting errant snowflakes out of her hair. “It’s the big one.”

“The big what?” Harry smirks, and oh God, she wants to wipe the dumb grin off his stupid fucking face.

“What are you, fucking twelve?” she asks him sarcastically, her eyes narrowed. “The blizzard. It’s finally here. We can’t go out there right now, we’ll get demolished.”

“Hmm,” Harry hums. “Wonder how we should pass the time?”

Allie feels her cheeks flare up in an instant, heat pooling in her face and her mouth dropping open in indignation.

“ _You_ can do what you like,” she says irately. “I’m going to do my job.”

“Oh I know what I’d like,” Harry says, stepping closer to her. On reflex, she backs up, clattering against the ledge of a shelf. “And I think I know what you do, too.”

It seems like he’s been waiting all day long for an opening like this to take, and he’s now seizing it. Allie hates it, how smug and self-assured he looks — it reminds her of the old him, the one who held massive parties after plays and didn’t invite her or Cassandra. She hates admitting that even then, she’d found him attractive, just as she does now. In Harry’s every state of being — arrogant, spoiled, forlorn, sick, depressed — there isn’t one that she hasn’t secretly found attractive, sometimes in just the smallest ways. The furrow of his eyebrows, the tilt of his lashes, the skin of his wrists. Those details drive her crazy, especially when she has to pretend to herself that she’s not aware of them.

He runs a hand through his hair. Her eyes flick up the movement, and he notices.

“You’re not a good liar, Pressman,” he says, inching closer still. “You can lie to others, you can lie to yourself. But not to me. Not about this. Not after last night.” There it is, the final blow. They’re really doing this.

“That was—“

“A mistake?” Harry fills for her, a single eyebrow raised.

An impulsive decision, a shameless indulgence. And yet, Allie recognizes that the trepidation she’d felt afterwards and this morning hadn’t been regret, but fear. Fear and nervousness, for what’s going to come, for the inevitable.

“—not something I planned,” Allie finishes, standing up a little straighter.

“Sure,” Harry says, like he doesn’t believe her fully and is just humoring her. It’s infuriating. “You’re the one who came to my room, but sure.”

“You’re unbearable,” Allie says. He’s so close now, taking up her space, standing before her with those long eyelashes casting shadows across his cheeks in the meager lighting of the single overhead bulb.

“You like it,” Harry says. Then he’s kissing her and — yeah, okay, she’s kind of been looking forward to this all day, despite herself. He cups her face at first, gentle, and she curls her hands into the lapels of his coat. Outside, the wind from the snowstorm picks up and rattles the walls of the tiny tool shed, the racks shaking and clattering with the force of the gale.

Harry and Allie pay no attention as their kiss grows hotter, more purposeful. His hands find their way underneath her jacket to grip at her waist and she sighs into his mouth, snaking her arms up and around his shoulders and holding one hand in his hair. He hoists her onto the shelf entirely so she’s sitting on the metal ledge and her knees part of their own accord so he can stand between them, leaning over her and pressing backwards until her shoulders hit the wall.

“You drive me fucking crazy,” Harry whispers harshly into her ear before nipping the earlobe and, fuck, if that isn’t just about the hottest thing.

“I could say the same about you,” she murmurs, and she just _knows_ those words are going straight to his ego. She’s right, because his hands fall to her hips, holding her steady as he grinds against her and…God, they’re in a fucking tool shed in the middle of a blizzard that could very well knock out the power for good and spell the end of the entire town, but all Allie cares about is getting Harry closer to her, as close as he can possibly be.

One of his hands is moving to the drawstring of her track pants and yeah, okay, he definitely _can_ see right through her. The contact of his bare palm against the skin of her hip is nearly enough to undo her, and then he’s sliding a hand underneath the fabric, pressing against her cotton underwear and she moans at the contact.

He doesn’t make a comment about how wet she already is. He _knows_ , he can feel it, damnit, she’s been like this all morning if she’s being honest, every time she looks at him she _remembers_ —

And then withdraws from the kiss to press his forehead against hers so he can look into her eyes as he pushes the last bit of fabric out of the way and slides a finger neatly into her. She’s so slick it fits all the way in without any trouble and his eyes are dark and appreciative as she makes a breathy noise.

Matters progress, his hand working and his eyes never leaving her face, until she’s delirious and seeing stars. Allie unhappily adds “good with his fingers” to the mental list along with his mouth. He’s not done, pressing his hips against her insistently when he finally withdraws his hand. She can feel him against her, hard and heavy, and are they really about to do this, here of all places?

Here, in the middle of the old rec center tool shed while there’s a blizzard outside. A blizzard that has suspiciously gone quiet...

“Wait,” Allie says, tapping a hand against his arm. “Wait, do you hear that?”

“Mm, no,” Harry murmurs against her neck, still holding her close.

“That’s what I mean. I think the blizzard stopped,” she says. She can’t hear the wind blowing outside anymore; it’s dead silent but for their breathing.

“So what?” Harry asks, not seeming to give a damn and continuing to nose long her collarbone. 

“So that means we have to leave now,” Allie replies, pushing him away. She’s almost glad for the excuse, even though it’s true — they have to be able to get home while the snow has stopped, in case it starts up again, and then they really will be trapped in here. It’s a godsend that the council’s been keeping the roads salted this month as a precaution; they all knew this was coming.

Harry knows this just as well as she does, but he struggles for a moment to fully pull away, biting his lip and shaking his head. She knows this is the second time he’s been left hanging, but she can’t really find it in herself to be that sympathetic, considering their first time together last summer.

“Fine,” he sighs, peeling away and turning from her so he can right himself, running a ragged hand through his hair.

Outside, the world is silent the way it always is after a big snow. There’s no doubt that this is just a lull and that it’s going to come down again soon; the sky overhead is still laden with heavy, gray clouds and there’s still a soft wind that blows through, threatening to pick up force at any moment. They don’t speak as they trudge back to the car, Allie thanking all available deities that she’d decided to wear her heavy duty boots over her track pants today. They keep silent in the car, too, though Harry’s hand stays on the center gear shifts and every so often, it flexes, like it wants to reach out and touch her. They both receive a text from Grizz at some point, telling them all to get home safe from their work schedules for now and wait out the storm.

In the house, Harry follows closely behind Allie as she shucks off her boots and coat. He keeps his eyes trained on her and she knows he’s waiting for her to make the next move, on her own terms.

In the kitchen, she lays her hands flat on the countertop, considering him for a moment. He just watches her, intent written all over his face.

“There would have to be rules,” Allie finally says, fretting at the tip of her ear once again. He follows the movement with his eyes. “If we’re going to do this, that is.”

“Allie’s rules, huh?” He doesn’t reject the idea outright.

“No one can know,” she says, trying not to let her hands shake. “It has to be a secret.”

Harry nods; that one’s a given. “And?”

“And — it just is what it is. Okay? There’s nothing else to it.”

She hates that she wants to call it “no strings attached,” but that’s effectively what she’s laying out. This, she can handle, she’s decided. Separating the physicality of it with all other aspects — Allie’s awfully good at compartmentalizing. Plus, she’s tired of fighting against the part of herself that, plainly, wants him. And Harry? Well, he’s a teenage boy, after all. He gets what he’s obviously wanted all along.

Harry agrees to it easily enough, though his jaw pulses once like he’s gritting his teeth. 

“And...if one person wants to stop, then we stop. No questions asked.”

“You’re on, Pressman.”

He’s still looking down at her and she finally turns her head so she can meet his eye and says, after a beat, “Let’s go to your room.”

And they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy, oh boy. hallie, am i right?
> 
> so many more things were meant to happen in this chapter, but it was seriously getting away from me! hence, i decided to cut it down to what's here. more to come later on!
> 
> as always, thank you for reading ♡


	4. with just one wave, it goes away

Sex with Harry is, in a word, unexpected.

In Allie’s wildest dreams, it had always been frenzied and hot, and he’s seductive and sexy; given, it is like that sometimes. Like their first time after the initial agreement, snowed in from the blizzard, when he’d pinned her against the sheets and had to keep his hands pressed around her hips to keep them down while she shook around him.

Other times, he fucks her so slowly it’s like torture and she nearly sobs against him, nails scratching along the skin of his back as she urges him to get the hell on with it, but he won’t listen, setting a molten pace that leaves her wanting and overwhelmed. And there are times when he’s completely pliant and obedient, taking directions from her without question as she sits atop him, pins his wrists down, and just watches him, forcing him to stay still while she calls the shots, something burning and reverent in his eyes.

But it’s not always like that. Sometimes he’s talkative, chatting idly with her about their mundane tasks, the post-blizzard cleanup efforts, the cataloguing, the hike to the clearing on schedule for next week, all while they get their hands on each other. She’s surprised that she’s so into it, enjoying the sound of his voice more than anything while he slides his fingers into her and tells her about how people in the cafeteria have finally stopped giving him dirty looks whenever they go for communal lunch hour.

They fall into a routine. Work, lunch, work, dinner, home, sex, sometimes with a break or two in the middle of the day where, if they find themselves alone, they sneak off to make out for a few minutes before getting back to work.

What surprises Allie is that the fire in her doesn’t die down after the first couple times. If anything, it burns even hotter every time she looks at him. The first time she slept with Harry, in his room during the party, she had no desire afterwards to do it again. It was like the mystery had been solved, and going back to solve it again would have been a waste of time. She doesn’t know if it’s because he’d been a bad lay that time, or if they were just too different then.

It’s not like that now. He’s more than made up for that night’s disappointment in the time since they’ve struck up. She feels like she’s on fire whenever he glances her way and, God, the small part of her that thought maybe her inner desire would be satisfied and that she could move on with her life after just doing it once or twice with him — that part is proven so, so wrong. Often it’s wordless between them, and she just hopes that other people aren’t able to tell.

They’ve started having meals with the others again now that they aren’t working garbage duty anymore. Allie makes it a point to sit with her friends and check in on them, or else she really would be spending nearly 24 hours a day with just Harry. Becca has a gleam in her eye that Allie finds truly discomforting, but she doesn’t say anything about it and politely pretends not to notice the way Allie always glances to the other side of the cafeteria out of the corner of her eye, aware of Harry in her periphery.

Sometimes Harry sits with Kelly who still likes to check in with him and catch up, the sweet thing, but most of the time he’s alone. At dinner one day, she glances up from her plate because she feels his eyes on her, and then she looks at him and he looks at her and the end of that is they go back home and fuck in Harry’s room until Allie’s legs feel like jelly.

“I had a dream about this,” Allie confesses once when they’re making out in the backseat of his Maserati after dark, just because they can. It has a permanent spot on her driveway now, and if they’re not walking, they’re usually taking it around town to where they need to be. Harry's started giving Allie driving lessons once he had realized that she isn’t actually able to do more than go in a straight line and make right hand turns, but often it just turns into this, her draped over him as they languish in the back seat, parked in some secluded spot near where the roads crumble into wilderness.

“Yeah?” he asks, brushing her hair to one side so he can kiss along the back of her neck.

“It was the first night you let me drive this thing, before we started garbage duty. You remember that?”

“You’ve had the hots for me since _then,_ Pressman?” he says, a teasing lilt in his voice. Allie hits him against the chest lightly and then flutters her lashes when he does the thing she likes so much, nipping her earlobe lightly. But the time on the dashboard catches her eye and she groans, pushing back from him reluctantly.

“We gotta go, we’re going to miss curfew.”

“Ugh,” Harry grumbles. She tries not to find it endearing. “Want me to drive back, or do you think you can handle it?”

“I think I can give it a shot.”

She’s gotten better, that’s for sure, but her left turns are still too wide, her starts and stops are still too jolting, lurching them forward in their seats because Harry still makes her stop at all the posted signs and traffic lights, even though there’s nobody else around.

“Ease it, like we talked about,” he reminds her, holding a hand up to mimic her foot easing on the gas pedal rather than tapping it suddenly like she’s prone to do.

“I know, I know,” she mumbles. He’s not too bad of a teacher — better than her dad anyway, who would just get frustrated with her when she didn’t understand his directions or the mechanics of the steering wheel. He’s surprisingly patient and thorough and doesn’t chide her when she makes a mistake, just gently corrects her and tells her how to fix it; some part of her realizes that he must have been this way with Lucy, and she tries not to let it tug at her heartstrings.

The next stop is better, the car rolling to a gentle halt at the red light without either of them getting jerked forward.

“Nice one, Pressman,” Harry says, sounding pleased. “You’ll be getting your big girl license in no time.”

It’s a little scary how easily the both of them can slip between their two modes, the friendship and the fucking. It’s never anything complicated when they’re like this, just chatting or bantering, no pressure from one person for anything else. When they want it, it’s always mutual — she can just tell what he’s thinking about and most of the time she’s thinking the same thing — and when they don’t, they can be this. Friends.

Their rotation on Grizz’ equipment inventory team is just about finished up. Their last day is soon, and it also coincides with when it’s finally their turn to hike up to the clearing and survey the land they’re set to live off of come spring.

Allie can tell that Harry’s reluctant to go; she doesn’t know if it’s because he’s uncomfortable with venturing outside the town limits and confronting the fact that this place really is different or if it’s because he just doesn’t enjoy the outdoors as much as she does, typical New England trust fund kid that he is. She’s willing to take a shot in the dark that it’s the former — whenever she tries to engage him in all the popular theories about dimension travel and parallel universes, he seems pointedly uninterested, just humming along and changing the subject deftly.

In any case, she really wants to go and see the land for herself so she can get an idea of what exactly the place they’re pinning their entire survival on looks like. And she’ll admit, it’s a little unfair, the way she coerces him to come along — involving an illicit, mid-afternoon break in which she is purposefully withholding and he’s frustrated enough to relent with a snappy “fine, we’ll go on the fucking hiking trip.” But hey, it’s effective.

The day of the hike, Grizz hands each of them a backpack with basic gear like a compass and flashlights and a couple of granola bars stashed inside. Harry goes through each item with a certain amount of trepidation, but Allie’s not worried. Grizz has trekked along this route dozens of times now; there are even talks of cutting down trees and clearing a path once it gets warmer outside so they can have a makeshift road that goes between the town and the clearing. 

It’s a crisp and clear morning; next week is March, which really means the advent of spring is just around the corner. Allie can feel it in the air as she gears up — the sky is blue, a couple of birds flit from the trees, and she can just imagine how the forest is going to look in the summer. Lush and green and brimming with life, hopefully just like the rest of the town. She breathes in deeply through her nose, trying to imagine the scent, pretending that the trees aren’t bare and the ground isn’t still half frozen and littered with dead leaves underfoot.

“Our parents used to take me and Cassandra on these long forest walks in the fall when we were little,” she tells Harry while their small group makes its way through the trees. Grizz is heading them up, his steel trap of a mind having memorized the route long ago. “Right when the leaves would turn, and it was like the whole world was just red and orange and everything smelled like maple. That was before we found out Cassandra was sick, and all we wanted to do was run and jump into the leaves.”

She wonders if it’s insensitive to talk about her happy family memories like that, knowing that he probably doesn’t have an equivalent. But Harry smiles at her, seemingly content to listen to her ramble on.

“Wish I’d thought to do that for Lucy,” he says. “When she was five, she slipped through the fence around the backyard and wandered into the trees. My mom called the police, and when they found her, she was just sitting in the dirt, trying to build a birdhouse out of sticks.”

“She sounds amazing. I wish I could meet her,” Allie says wistfully.

“Maybe you can. Maybe one day, we’ll wake up and we’ll suddenly all be back in West Ham again, like nothing ever happened.”

“...You really believe that?”

“No,” Harry admits. “But I still think about it, sometimes.”

Allie would be lying if she said she didn’t think the same. Like one day she’ll snap her eyes open and her mom will be calling her down to breakfast and Cassandra will be there in the kitchen, going over flashcards for her APs and her dad will give them both a kiss on the cheek before he leaves for work. But she doesn’t know if she’s capable of all that anymore, like if she did suddenly find herself back in West Ham somehow, how would she be able to go on? Go to school, do homework, apply for college, talk to her parents, all while knowing what she knows about life and death and the fragility of its structure.

“I don’t know if I’d be able to,” she tells Harry as they weave their ways through the trees. “It hasn’t even been a year, and yet it feels like this is all I’ve ever known.”

“I know,” Harry agrees, contemplative. “At first, I didn’t know who I was in this place. And now, if we went back...I don’t know who I’d be there.”

Allie doesn’t have an answer to that, since she also has the same question for herself. The Harry she’s become familiar with now is so different from the _king of the school_ persona of the old days — there are traces of him there sometimes, especially in his smirk or the confidence of his touches when they’re alone — but that’s a smaller part of a bigger picture. He’s thoughtful, funny, patient, observant...he still has his bad days, where he has a hard time connecting with the rest of the world, and Allie notices his hands twitching (she’s read that even years sober, the cravings might never stop). On those days, he usually seeks her out and they’ll spend it in bed, wrapped in each other's arms where they don’t have to think too hard about the outside world.

For the most part, she finds she’s still discovering new qualities about Harry Bingham every day that are pleasant surprises.

Up ahead, Grizz announces that they’re almost there.

“Finally,” Harry mutters under his breath. Allie nudges him playfully in the shoulder.

“Hey, it was nice,” she says, “and it was barely an hour.” Harry rolls his eyes, but she thinks he secretly agrees with her.

They’re the only ones in the group who haven’t been to the clearing before. When they get there, Luke, Bean, Gwen, and a couple others immediately unshoulder their packs and disperse into separate sects along the perimeter where they can take photos and record things.

For Allie, though, she stands staring in awe at the expanse before her, the wide plain surrounded by a crop of trees, the sound of running water nearby, the openness of the sky after walking for an hour surrounded by branches. It couldn’t be a more perfect plot of land for what they need; she feels a rising sensation in her chest, overcome with a pure and fierce feeling that she hasn’t had in a long, long time: hope.

Without another word, she takes off into the vast openness, spreading her arms out behind her and laughing, pure and simple, as she feels the wind running through her hair and throwing her knitted hat right off her head. She doesn’t care, though, spinning around and taking it all in — hearing about it had been so critical, a turning point for sure, but being here in person, standing in the middle of it… Allie feels, for maybe the first time, that this new world really is meant for them to make their own.

From a distance, Grizz laughs and shakes his head in a way that says he’s probably used to this from people who come here for the first time. Behind her, she feels her hat being jammed back on over her head and around her ears. She whirls around; Harry is standing there, more life and color in his face than she can remember ever seeing before, grinning at her.

“Harry,” she says breathlessly, like she’s meeting him here for the first time. “Isn’t this so great?”

“It really is something,” he says, but he’s not looking around at the land. He’s looking at her with a light in his eyes that’s so raw and unfiltered that her knees momentarily go weak. Standing here in this field, in this moment, the winter sunlight shining above them and making Harry look like he’s gleaming, Allie wants nothing more than to kiss him. A big, sweeping, end-of-romcom-movie kiss, where he spins her around in his arms and birds sing and all is right in the world, because this moment is just so perfect. Maybe he wants that too, the thought blossoming small and hopeful in the back of her mind.

It’s that thought that brings it all down, a crack in an otherwise perfect pane. She can feel the tension re-enter the set of her shoulders and the tightness of her mouth; his smile falters, too. There are too many people all around them — Luke is just a couple yards away, clearing the edge of the grass of branches, and Gwen is on their other side, writing down observations in her notebook while she studies some of the plants. That’s not who they are — not to the outside world, and not to each other.

She settles instead for reaching out to one of his hands and grasping it in her own, squeezing. Both their hands are cold and the tips of her fingers are numb, because neither of them thought to bring gloves. His gaze drops to where their hands are connected and, after a moment, he squeezes back. 

“Guys,” Grizz calls out to them. Allie lets their hands drop, startled. “Get a move on, we have to do this while the sun’s out.”

In her mind, while she turns away from Harry hurriedly, Allie plays off the redness in her cheeks as being from the cold outside instead of being caught. Caught doing what? They weren’t doing anything. Everyone knows more or less that she and Harry are friends now, no one has reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary is happening.

Their afternoon is spent exploring their assigned quadrant of land and surrounding forest. Grizz shows them a small pathway that they’ve marked with ribbons on the trees leading out to a small creek that, if followed for about half a mile, flows into a sizable lake. Allie tries to contain her delight at the sight of it and thinks, again, of the hope this spells for them — they’re really going to make it. He also gives them a printed out packet of plant types that they’re instructed to try and identify, as well as collect different soil samples in vials taken from the chemistry lab at the high school so Gordie can examine them and try to determine what would grow best.

When the sun finally begins inching closer towards the horizon in the late afternoon and all their packed granola bars are gone, Grizz gathers their group together. On all edges of the clearing, various supplies have already been laid out in plastic bins and under tarps to protect them from the weather, shovels and extra tents, spare firewood, fishing rods. He has his backpack laid out on one of these supply stacks, his back turned while everyone huddles around.

“I’ve been working on this with Sam for weeks now,” he says as a prelude, unearthing a long, rolled-up sheet of paper from within his backpack. “This is just preliminary, we’re definitely not professionals and we’re still learning, so keep that in mind.” And then he spreads it out the long sheet of drafting paper, revealing blueprint sketches for a cabin, very clearly meant to be built right here in the clearing. It’s still rough around the edges, with ideas and notes scribbled all around the sketch, but it’s there.

“We’re hoping to get rolling on construction as soon as winter ends,” Grizz says, a hint of pride in his voice. “Alongside the farming, you know, have someone be here to tend to it at all times.”

“Grizz,” Bean says, awed. “This is amazing.”

“Yeah,” Allie agrees, that same hope rising in her chest again. At once, she’s so incredibly grateful that someone like Grizz exists among their group of intrepid town residents. “Seriously, we’d be lost without you.”

“Yeah man, even I gotta say this is impressive,” Harry comments, sliding the sheet closer to himself so he can inspect it. “You got the proportion here wrong, though, and the angle.” He points at a corner of the page that looks completely reasonable to Allie.

“Huh,” Grizz says, squinting at the spot. “Oh shit, you’re right...I sucked at trig in high school, you know? There was a reason the only APs I took were humanities.”

“Kinda pisses me off,” Harry says, rubbing the back of his head. “All those times that Mrs. Iverson got mad if anyone asked her when they’d use any formulas in real life. Now look at us.”

Grizz chuckles, and Allie looks at Harry in wonder. She’d almost forgotten that about him — he’d been a good student, competing with Cassandra for valedictorian of course, good at math and science, well-read, book smart. Cassandra would rant about how unfair it was that he never had to study while she worked her ass off for the grades she got.

“Well hey, this is just a first draft but if you ever want to look ‘em over, maybe try your hand at the calculations, you’re more than welcome,” Grizz says. And Harry considers it, seriously considers it, nodding in thanks and even looking a little pleased with himself at having contributed something worthwhile.

Allie watches him and admires how far he’s come, how much he’s grown. 

  


* * *

  


There’s only about an hour of daylight left, the sun inching closer and closer to the tops of the trees of the surrounding forest. They use it to make the trek back into town, and by the time they come across the school soccer field that they used as their departure point, it’s just edging between dusk and nightfall, a faint blue glow still settled over the world for the next few minutes. Allie’s growing restless; Harry had been shooting her sidelong looks the entire walk back, and she’s eager to get home and drag him upstairs. But then Luke suggests that they all catch dinner together before the cafeteria closes for the night, and it’ll look suspicious if Allie and Harry beg off without a good excuse, so Allie just gives him a tiny shrug and they go.

They’re all gathered around one table together, having the last of the lasagna the kitchen had put together for that night’s dinner. Allie’s laughing along as Gwen and Bean crack jokes, trying not to react to Harry’s foot playfully nudging hers under the table. She shoots him a furtive look when others are distracted with the conversation, a sort of _”you serious?”_ glance that he just quirks his eyebrows at. Allie rolls her eyes — juvenile asshole. His foot nudges hers again and she kicks him in the shin, smiling innocently when his lips press into a line to suppress his grunt of pain.

Allie’s had the perfect day. So obviously something has to happen to bring all that crashing down, because she’s apparently not allowed to have things in her life go right. While she’s in the middle of puzzling through another one of Grizz’s profound, philosophical musings, she spots him out of the corner of her eye.

His hair is messy, no longer in the slicked back style that she always thought made him look kind of like an 80’s John Travolta wannabe, and it’s clear he hasn’t shaved in a few days, but she recognizes her cousin all the same, slouched over a broom on the other end cafeteria by the exit and flanked on either side by Shoe and Jason. It’s Campbell alright, and he’s taken notice of their little group — particularly her, though he glances away and goes back to sweeping when she catches sight of him.

Allie feels dread prickle across her skin; she’d done her best to forget Campbell had ever existed. And it had worked for a while — she’s so caught up with the everyday tasks of her job and tries hard to force her world even smaller than their two hundred-odd population, narrowing it down to just the people she likes to spend time with: her friends, the other people on Grizz’s equipment team, and, of course, Harry. That had been working so well, probably because it was no longer her responsibility to worry about what became of Campbell or where he was being confined — and that was freeing. She didn’t anticipate seeing him again, out in the open like this, caught so unawares.

She feels her heart jump to somewhere in her throat and doesn’t realize that her knuckles are going white from her hands clenching in her lap until she feels Harry, subtly, try to pry them open with his own hands under the table. He gives her a look that asks, _”what’s wrong?”_ Wordlessly, Allie signals with her eyes back over at Campbell. When Harry sees, he immediately stiffens up, his own hands returning to his sides and flexing into the air.

Somehow the rest of the group’s conversation had wrapped up without Allie realizing it, because everyone stands and gathers their things to leave. Hurriedly, she scrambles out of her seat, Harry following behind her, to catch up with the others. Campbell is sweeping by the door, and she’s hoping that maybe if she’s wrapped up in the group, she won’t have to deal with him at all.

That’s not the case. When the group of them pass by, Campbell doesn’t say anything, but he zeroes in on Allie and Harry at once, first glancing at him and then at her. His jaw is clenched, like he’s holding back from speaking, and his gaze sends something cold and unwelcome shivering down Allie’s spine. It’s full of intent, haughty like he knows something she doesn’t, like a promise that he’s by no means done with her yet and he undoubtedly finds her at fault for his position today.

In her throat, her heart picks up and she clenches her fists together in her pockets. When they’re finally through the door and out of Campbell’s range, Harry tries putting a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs him off roughly.

“Hey,” she hisses, sidling up next to Bean. “Why the fuck is Campbell here?”

“Ugh, shit, I didn’t think he’d be on cafeteria duty tonight,” Bean says, looking contrite. “Sorry you had to see him, it was just unlucky.”

“No, I mean what is he doing _out_?” Allie clarifies. “Isn’t he supposed to be in prison for life?”

Bean’s eyes widen. “You don’t know? We’ve started putting him to work…we voted on it ages ago at the public forums.”

Allie shifts uncomfortably — she never goes to any of the meetings. “Do you think that’s safe?”

“We’ve been talking about it for ages, actually,” Bean says, not quite defensively, but there’s a harder edge in her normally cheery voice. “But the consensus is that we just can’t afford to waste time and resources keeping him locked up all the time when he could be contributing something.”

 _If you’d bothered to come to any of the public forums, you’d know this,_ is the underlying subtext in her tone. She’s right, Allie knows, but it doesn’t make it any less jolting to have seen him here, tonight.

“Okay,” she says, now just wanting the conversation to be over. She wants to be home, away from it all, away from all these people. She can’t stand how many are gathered around her, suddenly. “I get it. It’s fine.”

Pretending to be cold, Allie wraps her arms around herself and breaks off from the rest of the crowd so she can walk behind them, by herself. She tries forcing herself to take deep breaths, but they come across shallow and quick. A shadow falls over her, contrasted with the streetlights above, and she jolts but it’s just Harry, a tight look on his face as he falls into pace with her.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she grits out. All she wants to focus on right now is walking, the feeling of the pavement, solid and real underneath her heel every time she takes a step forward, like channelling her attention to that can keep her grounded to reality and keep her from spiraling.

When they get home, she doesn’t say a word and goes straight to her bedroom, shucking off her winter coat and knit hat somewhere on the carpet and kicking her boots off so she can curl in a ball on the bed, her knees tucked into her chest and her back against the headboard. She’s been a complete fool. A total fucking idiot. _Naive._ Why did she think that all her problems would go away just because she turned over leadership to the council and because Campbell was sentenced to prison?

The more she thinks about it, the more Allie realizes that she has no idea what’s going on with the town. Like, at all — she’s willfully closed herself off from that world, the one of social responsibility and communal pitching in and making your voice heard. All she does is keep her head down and do her assigned duty. So much of her old self that she’d poured into the leadership role now sits, abandoned and unused, in a corner of her mind, like she can just turn off that part of her personality. All at once, she feels guilty for being so willfully ignorant of the state of the town and for no longer caring what might happen to the people of New Ham just as long as her days are peaceful, panicked at the thought of Campbell and what he might do — because she has no doubt he’s still capable of destruction even while incarcerated — and angry at herself for being stupid and vapid enough to think her life was going swimmingly just because her days were easy and she was getting regularly laid.

It’s all too much, the overwhelming and torrential whirlpool of emotions, and it causes the panic to win out. The feeling shoots across her veins, her bedroom suddenly too small and too large all at once, the walls pressing in closer and closer around her, even as she tries to make herself as small as possible, curled up on her bed.

She closes her eyes and forces herself to inhale through her nose and exhale out her mouth, calm the wild beating of her heart, focus on the real things that can keep her grounded and sane. The feeling of her bedspread underneath her, years old. She’d picked it out with Cassandra when they both decided it was time to redecorate their rooms from the childish aesthetic of their girlhoods. The cool metal of the wiry headboard against her shoulder blades. The fabric of her sweatshirt, which is beginning to fray at the edges of the sleeves from how much she clutches her hands there. It’s the one she wore the day of Cassandra’s funeral, she realizes, the pink one, torn at the neckline.

It helps for a little, but then she remembers Campbell all over again and feels like the walls are closing in around her. She wants to grab her phone from where she’d tossed it on the desk and call her mom so she can listen to the voicemail greeting, but the task of going across the room to retrieve it is too much right now. Instead, she wraps her arms around her shins and buries her face into her knees and tries to focus on her breathing again, but they come out shaky and thin. She squeezes her eyes shut and counts the seconds as the feeling lasts, for an eternity and then some.

There’s a tentative knock at the door. “Allie?” she hears Harry call, muffled through the wood.

She doesn’t answer, still trying to remember how to breathe, and he knocks again.

“Go away,” she calls out, but her voice doesn’t even sound like her own to her ears. And then he’s gently opening the door and venturing into her room; she can’t see because her head is still buried in her knees, her hair falling all around her like a wild curtain, but she can hear him gently shutting the door and padding inside.

Harry never comes into her room. Even when they sleep together, it’s always in his room or someplace else. Her room feels too private, too much like a sanctum — there are polaroids and photos stuck all over the walls and on her dresser of her and Cassandra, her and Will, her and her family, and the thought of what they all might think — mostly Cassandra — of her regularly fucking Harry Bingham is too much for her to bear, so she always directs them away from her bedroom. She thinks Harry gets it because he’s never brought it up, going along with whatever she wants easily.

But he’s here now, she can feel his presence at the foot of the bed and then the dip in the mattress when he sits down. She doesn’t raise her head, her shoulders still shaking with the simple effort of breathing. He seems to be able to sense that she doesn’t want him to say anything, because he remains silent when he inches forward until he’s sitting next to her, sliding an arm around her shoulders so she’s tucked up against his side.

She makes a choked sound at the contact, but otherwise remains unmoved. The only sound in the room is her ragged, labored breathing and the sound of her heart in beating in her own ears. Softly, Harry lifts a hand to stroke it against her head in long, calming, rhythmic sweeps. He also starts taking these long, deep breaths, in through his nose and out through his mouth in a predictable pattern that she finds herself subconsciously adapting to as the minutes pass on.

Eventually the wild heartbeat subsides, as does the feeling of the walls trapping her in. Soon, she’s just breathing with Harry as he holds her close and strokes her hair, not saying anything. She lifts her head up and turns it on its side, her cheek resting on her knees, facing Harry. The tears haven’t quite spilled over, but her eyes are wet when she looks up at him.

“Thanks,” she mumbles against the fabric of her pants. She can’t help but wonder if this had been just a favor or if it provided him comfort too; Campbell’s a touchy subject for the both of them, and Harry has plenty of demons in his closet when it comes to dealings with him. Seeing Campbell tonight couldn’t have been easy for him either.

He just lifts a corner of his mouth at her, not seeming to want to break the moment with words. She uncurls from her position, her legs slightly cramped from having been held so tightly against her body for that long, and nestles into the bend of her arm, laying her head down on his chest so she can listen to him breathe.

They never do this, either — spend the night with one another. Allie always returns to her own room to go to bed; she never let herself consider the alternative of letting herself fall asleep next to him, or waking up next to him in the morning. Deep down, she doesn’t trust herself to do that and maintain this good, uncomplicated thing they have going on, where they both have fun and are able to stay friends at the end of the day.

But now, Allie finds herself letting her eyes fall shut, laden with the day’s exhaustion, both physical and emotional. And Harry is warm and solid and _here_ , and her mind is too frayed and fragile around the edges to stick to the self-imposed boundaries she’s set up around him. The way he is right now, it reminds her of falling asleep with him on the couch in front of the television, the world hazy and blue as baby Eden slept soundly at their feet. It reminds her of Harry sliding onto the floor of his bedroom next to her after her nightmare all those months ago, how his simple presence ebbed her anxieties and soothed her mind, even then, when she was supposed to be hating him.

The truth is that she could never hate Harry.

With that thought and with Harry’s hand still stroking her hair, Allie lets her mind ease into sleep, falling, falling, falling. 

  


* * *

  


Allie wakes up, bleary-eyed and groggy, to the sound of her phone buzzing relentlessly on her desk, notifications blowing up the screen so that it illuminates the dark of the room, a beam of weak light shining from the surface as it vibrates with each new ping.

She and Harry had burrowed under the covers sometime in the night. His nose is buried in her hair behind her and his arm is wrapped around her waist, their legs tangled up together under the comforter. She has her socks on and is still dressed in the clothes she’d worn that day. Harry is like her own personal radiator, wrapped around her so close that her temples bead with sweat.

Even though she's overheated, Allie throws the covers back with some reluctance; other than that, she'd been so comfortable. But her phone won't stop going off, so she gets to her feet and lumbers over to the desk to grab the device and squint at the screen.

Most of the notifications are from Helena, but there are several from all others — Elle, who's staying at Gwen's tonight for a last-day-of-library-duty celebration, Becca, Kelly, Will, Gordie, even Luke and Grizz. She scrolls all the way down to the first message, which seems to be a town-wide blast; she recognizes the group chat as the one she never checks, the one the council uses to send status updates.

As Allie reads on, she feels her mind going numb and she stands paralyzed in place for a second before jumping into overdrive. She's already had her moment today to feel overwhelmed and useless. She can't afford that right now — it's like her flight response is activated as soon as she snaps out of place, picking her coat and shoes up off the floor and pulling them on haphazardly.

"Harry!" she hisses, trying to stay quiet. Her heart is loud in her ears, beating like a drum that urges her on. It's not anxiety that fills her veins this time, but adrenaline. She lets that take over when she throws the covers fully back from him too and shakes him by the shoulders. "Harry!" she calls again, willing him to wake up.

"'S goin' on?" he mumbles, blinking sleepily.

"You have to get up now. It's an emergency," she says, trying not to let panic creep into her voice. He must be able to sense her urgency though, because he sits up a little more fully, seeming slightly more awake.

"What's happening?"

"I just got like, a thousand messages. It's Campbell — he's escaped, or broke out, or something. Tonight," she explains to him, trying to remain calm.

" _What?_ " Harry is definitely fully awake now.

"Shh," Allie shushes him, holding her hands up fretfully. That's not even the worst part. “And a few people have said they’ve seen someone around the streets tonight, after he was reported missing — they think he's heading our way. Here. So we have to go, _now_." Allie fails at belying the panic in her voice towards the tail, her voice shaking slightly as she speaks quickly.

She knows they're both thinking the same thing: tonight had been the first time either of them had seen Campbell since his sentencing months ago. It can't be a coincidence; she recalls the look in his eye, and she knows he must have been planning for this very moment. What he has in store, though, she can only imagine.

Without another word, Harry scrambles up out of bed, darting into his room so he can get his jacket and shoes. Allie grabs the basic necessities — her phone, keys, and charger, stuffing them all into her coat pocket as she meets Harry in the hallway. Campbell could already be here for all they know, so they try their best to remain quiet as they sneak downstairs. For a moment, she thinks wildly of her dad creeping into the kitchen in the middle of the night wielding a baseball bat when he thought, years ago, that an intruder was shuffling around outside the windows. It turned out to be the neighbor's golden retriever that had gotten out of the house somehow, and they all had a laugh about it as a family afterwards. 

If only it were some intrepid wandering dog this time, instead of Campbell.

Downstairs seems to be empty when they finally make it to the landing of the staircase; it's dead silent, the corners all dark except for where the moonlight shines through the sliding glass doors in the kitchen and from the big picture window set high in the front entrance foyer. She doesn't want to turn on any lights and chance alerting Campbell to their presence if he actually is here. Next to her, she can feel Harry breathing shakily.

"What the fuck do we do now?" he hisses in her ear.

"Quiet," Allie replies tightly. She looks towards the front door and then, on a whim, tugs at his sleeve for him to follow her to the sliding door that leads into the backyard instead. It rolls open smoothly and silently after they creep over to it; her dad had been obsessed with keeping it greased, said it was his greatest pet peeve to have a sliding door with rusty, crusty tracks. Mentally, she thanks him for possibly saving their lives tonight. Even in New Ham, her parents are still sort of looking out for her in the smallest of ways.

The backyard is overgrown with dead weeds and grass; her mom would think it's a travesty, but no one had the time, energy, or desire for the meticulous upkeep the garden and yard requires. A layer of frost covers everything and Allie can see her breath fog up in the air when she exhales once they're both fully out of the house and seemingly in the clear.

"Car keys?" she whispers to Harry, deciding that their best bet is a quick getaway rather than remaining on foot. Even if Campbell is here, there's not much he'd be able to do if they’re already in the car and racing away.

Harry pats his jacket pocket to signal that they're there. They make their way over to the driveway, Allie glancing back towards the house after every couple hundred feet. It sits silent over her, familiar and worn. She's always loved her house. Her parents made a huge effort into making sure it felt like home, going through multiple renovations and additions, with its gardens and open concept kitchen that still managed to have clutter on it at all hours of the day when the four of them — Allie, Cassandra, and their parents — were occupying it. This is where she’d grown up; this is where she’d felt safe. But there's something daunting about the way it looms over her in the night right now, against the background of black clouds in the dark sky. She supposes the real people who made the house feel like a home have all been gone for a long time, anyway.

Allie and Harry collectively give a huge sigh of relief once they shut the car doors around them, metaphorically in the clear. Allie pulls out her phone, deciding to answer the latest text from Helena that's asking for status updates and if she's okay.

 _We're okay & out of the house,_ she writes, and hits send. Then she types: _No sign of anyone yet but will let you know. Leaving now._

Before she can hit send on the second message however, and before Harry has started the car engine, Allie spots him.

He’s just a shadow in the dark, but Allie can recognize Campbell’s silhouette loping across the front lawn. He’s not even trying to be inconspicuous or sneaky, walking completely confident and normal like it’s midday rather than past midnight. There’s something in his hand that he carries by his side, sort of like a briefcase, but it’s too clunky, large, and irregularly shaped for that.

She grabs Harry’s arm and points over to Campbell’s shadow; thankfully, they haven’t been spotted from their position inside the car that still sits, stationary and silent, on Allie’s driveway.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Harry mouths at her, and she gestures and shakes her head to tell him she obviously has no clue.

Harry makes an aborted movement like maybe he's going to press the ignition button, but Allie puts a hand on his arm to stop him. Harry gives her an inquisitive look, but she ignores him, eyes still trained on Campbell as he all but waltzes up to the front door of their house. What the fuck is he doing? She watches as he procures a key from his pocket (a _key_ , where the fuck had he gotten a key from? though it's more than possible there had been one lying around at his house, their families had been relatively close) and unlock the front door.

"What the fuck?" she mutters once he's inside and no longer within earshot of them in the car. "What is he doing?"

"Who cares?" Harry says, his free hand flexing over the steering wheel grip. "Let's not stick around to find out."

Allie bites her lip, though she's inclined to agree with him. It's not worth it to stick around and find out what kind of unhinged plot Campbell's cooked up. No doubt if they hadn't been warned then she and Harry probably would have been found murdered in their beds in the morning. Another thought enters her mind then — does he also know that Elle is living here now? Had he come for her, too?

She dreads to think about what might have happened and sends a silent thanks to the heavens that Elle has finally come out of her shell enough to be having sleepovers at other people's houses, particularly tonight.

"Yeah, okay, let's get out of here," Allie finally relents, taking her hand away from Harry's wrist. As the car starts up, she revises the text to Helena and presses send, telling her that Campbell is here now and that they're out of the house, about to drive away. Hopefully people will be here soon to take him back into custody and they can be in the clear.

And then, as Harry begins carefully rolling back out of the drive, Allie sees light coming from inside. Not the house lights being turned on, or any use of electricity, but _fire._ It's small at first, just an orange glow coming from the front-facing living room windows, but it grows quickly, a flare of brightness that licks up the curtains and against the glass panes.

Campbell is setting her house on fire.

Suddenly, she understands what he must have been carrying by his side: gasoline.

She's moving suddenly on pure impulse. Without any warning, Allie wrenches the door open in the still-moving car, though it's slow enough that she only stumbles slightly before she sets off at a run towards the front door. She can hear Harry cursing and calling her name behind her, but she doesn't stop; all she can think of is getting inside the house, her house, her _family's house_ and saving what she can.

The smell of smoke and gasoline when she enters is overpowering. She coughs and holds her sleeve against her nose as she makes for the staircase; the fire hasn't spread yet to every room, still contained in the living room and kitchen area. Allie doesn't see Campbell anywhere, but she doesn't bother looking for him as she races up the stairs and into her room, going straight for the polaroids stuck on the wall and tearing down as many of them as she can. Her ninth birthday when Cassandra had tried and failed to bake her a cake from scratch. Her parent's twenty-fifth anniversary. Cassandra holding her Yale acceptance letter. They're all crumpled up and bent out of shape from how frantically she's clutching them and shoving them in her pockets, but that doesn't matter — all that's important is that they're safe. 

Then, she moves to her parent's room where she knows her mom keeps her wedding ring and the matching gold star necklace that she, Allie, and Cassandra all have in a special, sealed-off compartment of her jewelry box. The smoke has risen to the second level by now, acrid and clouded, and her eyes sting and water at the contact. Allie squints and powers through it, digging through the jewelry box with increasing desperation. They have to be here — _they have to be_ — the ring had been her grandmother's, and Allie's mom never wore it on a day-to-day basis because she was constantly afraid of losing it.

"Allie!" she hears Harry call from the entrance of the door, but she doesn't turn around to look, too busy scrabbling along tangled necklace chains and loose earring backings. "Allie, what the fuck are you doing?"

"Get out of here!" she yells at him. The room is getting hotter now, she can feel the heat of the fire like she's standing right in front of it. Harry's right, there's no time left, she has to leave. But she can't find what she's looking for, and she _needs_ to, because things are all she has left of the most important people in her life, and if this house goes then they really will be gone, all gone, like they never even existed here in New Ham. "I can't," she sobs, still digging through the box. It's hard to see now, a thick, dark haze shadowed over everything in the room. The smell of gasoline and burning has only gotten stronger. "I can't find them." She sounds desperate.

"Here," Harry says, roughly grabbing the entire jewelry box and tucking it under one arm. "Whatever you're looking for, we'll find it later, okay?"

She blinks for just a split second — she hadn't thought of that. And then she stands quickly, taking his hand held out to her and letting him guide her from the room.

In the hall, the smoke is only more concentrated, thick and gray and burning in her eyes and in her lungs. She tries her best to cover her mouth with her sleeve, breathe through the fabric instead, but it's difficult. Things haven't started to collapse and cave in yet, but the stairway banister is burning to the touch when they manage to get downstairs.

The flames here seem to have reached a peak, licking menacing and high in the living room and across the front door, blocking their most direct path out of the house. Harry doesn't miss a beat, tugging her along to the kitchen and towards the sliding glass door that they'd used earlier in the night. Allie lets herself follow him, too overcome with the burning in her eyes and lungs to think straight.

In the kitchen, there's a figure standing with his hands planted on either side of him against the countertop while the flames climb up the cabinets and onto the ceiling, their image burned against her retinas when Allie squeezes her eyes shut and then opens them again, hoping to regain some semblance of reality. It's Campbell, silent and grave as he watches them run into the kitchen and towards the door.

"You were supposed to be here," he says, but it sounds like he's talking more to himself than he is to them. "All three of you." He must be talking about Elle, Allie realizes. "You were supposed to be here."

In the light of the fire, reflected against his skin and hair, with smoke half-shadowing his face, Allie thinks he looks unhinged. He seems unbothered by the heat, standing still and unmoving.

"You're fucking insane," Harry calls out to him when they reach the sliding door. Campbell makes no move to stop them from leaving.

It dawns on Allie, then: he means to stay here. She stares at him for a moment, terrified at the prospect. _Come with us,_ she wants to say for just a moment, but she stops herself and follows Harry out the door and away from the fire.

The cool night air is a relief so welcome that it brings tears to her eyes, hot and biting, as she takes gulps of it and heaves out her last few coughs. Around the front of the house, other people have started to gather, groups of cars congregating on the street and people dotted all along the sidewalk.

When people spot Allie and Harry coming round the side of the house through the grass, there's a wave of exclamations and several people run up to her to wrap her in hugs. She can't quite keep track of who's arms belong to whom, but there's definitely Becca, Sam, Will, Elle, Grizz, and a few others.

"Oh my God, we thought you were still inside!"

"What _happened_ —"

"I can't believe he _set your fucking house on fire_ —"

"He's still in there!" Allie says, interrupting all of them. Off to the side, Luke, Clark, and Jason are unloading buckets of water from the back of Clark's pickup truck. She doesn't think they'll do any good — the entire block is illuminated from the flame, the smoke billowing up in a black cloud that's even darker than the night sky. "Campbell's still in there."

A few people cover their mouths in shock. Allie looks to Harry, who looks just as uncertain and unsteady on his feet as she feels. "Should we help him?" she asks, mostly directed just at him.

Harry swallows and a muscle in his jaw jumps slightly. "I think it might be too late for that," he says, gesturing with his chin towards the house. Part of the roof has collapsed, as has the paneling and overhang around the front door. The fire is resounding, crackling and popping maliciously as it continues to burn.

The lot of them standing there before Allie's house all just watch, entranced, as the billowing smoke and flames overtake the entire building and it begins to collapse in on itself, piece by piece. Clark and the others haven't even bothered to toss their buckets of water on the flame, knowing that it would be a futile effort.

After some minutes, the sky begins to rumble and — miraculously — opens up to a sudden and torrential downpour of rain, falling heavy and fast over their heads and soaking through Allie's hair in a matter of seconds.

In her pockets, Allie's hands curl around the crumpled up photographs, blinking water out of her eyes as her house continues to burn through the rain. 

  


* * *

  


_What the fuck were you thinking?_

She knows that must be Harry's thought every time she catches him looking at her. Afterwards, when they're gathered in Becca's house, wringing rain from their hair and clothes and smoke still clinging to their pores, Harry shoves the jewelry box into her arms. Immediately, she crouches down on the floor to dig through it; with better lighting, she can see that the ribbon latch to the hidden compartment had gotten caught in the velvet lining. When she tugs it free, both the ring and the necklace sit neatly there, clean and gleaming. She slips both of them into her pocket and snaps the box lid shut.

It'd been a crazy, stupid thing to do — she knows that. Both her parents and Cassandra would have been furious at her for doing it. But that's the thing: they're not here. Which is exactly why it had been so important to her to preserve their memories, to keep some part of them alive. Her mom and dad could very well be around and searching for her back in the real world, but here in New Ham, they never _were_ , except for in traces of themselves they left behind in things like photographs and necklaces.

She doesn't know how to explain this to Harry in a way that he'll understand. So she doesn’t, keeping her chin tucked in somberly towards her chest and hoping that she can get away with leaving the issue be.

They hold a service for Campbell the very next day at Helena's absolute insistence. There isn’t a body to retrieve — no one had dared to venture inside the house while it stood ablaze for nearly an hour before the rain finally reduced it to a black, charred ruin of what it once was. They’d kept watch around the perimeter, but no one had seen Campbell exit, and no one takes it upon themselves to venture inside to see what might have become of him, nor does anyone with authority have the heart to subject anyone to the horror that must be within.

Helena had taken it upon herself to organize the service. It reminds Allie of the way she had clasped Dewey’s shoulder in his final moments, sending a prayer for his soul. Blind with her dispensing of both grace and justice — in a faraway sense, Allie finds it admirable. As for herself, she doesn’t do anything but numbly sit in the pews in the front row, Sam by her side and Elle on the other. No one sits next to the three of them, seeming to want to give them privacy, or perhaps the complexity of their simultaneous relief and grief is too much to bear, warding away those who don’t have the depth to understand it.

They’ve all thought about killing Campbell at some point after arriving in New Ham. Elle had even acted on it, prepared to fully go through with the deed, until the disaster that was the Thanksgiving feast set all that back. Allie remembers the look of frustration and blame in Sam’s eyes when she revealed that she had let Campbell go after initially arresting him during Dewey’s trial. He had wanted her to act then, to prevent Campbell from the inevitable acts of evil he was going to perform. _We can’t punish people for who they are_ , Allie had said. 

Does she still think that, now? When all that she’s left with in the world are the clothes she had on her back when she escaped the house, a couple crumpled photographs, and two pieces of jewelry?

At the podium, Helena reads a verse from the Bible that she doesn’t recognize or bother paying attention to, letting the words hum around her head without really taking in their meaning.

Of course she’s relieved that Campbell is gone. It’s good for the whole town, really — philosophically and logistically speaking. No longer do they have to divert time and resources to keeping someone in prison indefinitely, no longer do they have to battle with the moral quandary of whether it’s right to do so, and no longer do they have to live in fear of any havoc he might potentially wreak in the future. But at the same time, she feels angry and mournful — for her cousin, for her house, for the incredible amount of loss that she and others have had to suffer time and time again in this place.

Every time she starts to feel hopeful about life in New Ham, something has to happen to chew that hope up and spit it back at her face. Cassandra’s death, the Thanksgiving poisoning, the coup…and now this.

After her somber reading, Helena asks if anyone wants to say any words. She glances at Allie and Sam, but none of them volunteer. She has no idea what she could even say about someone like Campbell, who was the source of so much of the grief in her life and whose death was really, in the end, his own fault. Not many people know, she realizes, about Campbell’s true nature, the one Sam had revealed to a group of them after that first movie night months ago.

Helena doesn’t press the issue, wrapping up the service quickly with a “may God rest his soul.” They’re one of the only ones who had shown up, the three of them. Harry is near the back somewhere (Allie could feel his eyes boring holes into the back of her head the entire time) along with Grizz, Luke, Jason, Clark, and just a couple others who had probably come just for the chance of a spectacle.

“I’ll see you at the house,” Sam signs to her as he gets up to leave. He wants to be alone, Allie realizes, or maybe with Grizz and Becca. Sam and Campbell have never been close — they hadn’t really spoken in months, even prior to everything with the coup. But they’d still been brothers, and considering her own feelings towards the whole situation are a jumbled, confusing mess right now, she can’t imagine what must be going on in Sam’s head.

“You okay?” Elle asks next to her, pressing a comforting hand against her shoulder.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Allie replies. “It’s so lucky that you weren’t there.”

“Honestly,” Elle says, biting her lip. “I don’t know if this is the right thing to say but…I’m kind of just…relieved. He was like this shadow, looming over everything I did, you know? I was still looking over my shoulder all the time, and now I don’t have to anymore. I don’t know if that makes me a bad person, but that’s how I feel.”

“No,” Allie says, grabbing her hand. “No, not at all. I feel that way too, but it’s just — I keep thinking about how fucked up everything is, right? Like, the sequence of events that led up to all this.”

“Yeah,” Elle agrees slowly, nodding her head. “But I think — I think that this, in particular, wasn’t because of this place. I think Campbell was always capable of something like this, regardless of if he was here or in the real world.”

Allie nods, appreciating just how insightful Elle is. She’s right, but Allie had never really considered that before. New Ham had pushed all of them to extremes, forced them to adapt into new versions of themselves out of necessity, for survival. But Campbell…he was already an extreme. The fact that outside conditions now happened to match those extremes of his was just a pure recipe for chaos.

“You’re still allowed to mourn, though,” Elle adds. “I mean, you just lost everything…”

Allie gives a thin smile. “I was able to save some stuff. It was stupid of me, but I just thought — you know, I never really considered any objects to be part of my identity, especially after we all got here. Things are just things. But once I saw the fire…it wasn’t me that I was trying to save in there. It was them, you know? Their memories.”

Elle gives her hand a squeeze to tell her she understands. Allie’s grateful, once again, to have her as a friend. 

“So what’s next for you and Harry?” she asks, seeking to change the subject.

It’s something about the way Elle says it — completely innocuous — with the automatic presupposition of Allie and Harry together, as one unit. Not “what’s next for you,” not “what about Harry,” but what’s next for the both of them?

Allie realizes in an instant that she knows. Maybe not about the exact details of her nebulous thing with Harry, but the concept of it. Allie and Harry. Together. She knows, she must have known all this time, she _lives_ with them for God’s sake, obviously she knows. It had been a fool’s errand to keep it quiet, God, she and Harry spend nearly every waking hour together, even if they’re not _together_ in the sense that Elle probably thinks that they are.

And yet there’s no judgement or trepidation in her voice or in her eyes, just a plain and genuine curiosity, like she’s asking about the weather, or what’s for dinner. She doesn’t care that Allie and Harry are together — just accepts that they are.

“Um,” Allie says, not sure how to express herself with the weight of her realization is hitting her in the face like a ton of bricks. “I’m — I’m not really sure.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a place to stay, right? Are you guys going to go Harry’s house, or I’m sure Becca will let you guys stay for as long as you want, too.”

“Right,” Allie says, her throat dry. There’s a warmth that blooms from the center of her chest and spreads all throughout her limbs, down to her fingertips as she lets a feeling surfaces that she’s pushed down for so, so long, refusing to let herself believe it was even there. 

She _wants_ to be with Harry. 

Not in the strange, no-strings-attached, sneaking around they’ve been doing, and not just the physicality of it. Well, yes, that, but not just that. She wants to be _together_ with him, the way that Elle so plainly thinks that they are.

She barely keeps it together as Elle bids her farewell with a hug, a ringing in her ears that’s coinciding with the rising feeling in her chest, a completely unfamiliar and liberating sensation. More than anything, she wants to go to Harry and share this feeling with him, the way she wants to share everything in her life with him.

She finds Harry leaning just outside the church doors against the brick facade. He’s not wearing a suit and tie this time, having seemed to have gotten the message from Cassandra’s funeral. Just his usual button-down shirt with a coat on top, though the days have been steadily getting warmer as March creeps forward. Everyone else has gone, so it’s just the two of them standing under the great white steeple; the rain from last night has washed away the clouds that have been hanging over the town since last night, and the air feels new.

“Hey,” Allie says, tucking her hair behind her ear as she mimics his posture, leaning up against the wall beside him.

“Hey,” he replies. She can’t read his face; maybe he’s still upset with her for running back inside the house. She’ll explain that to him, though, in time — and she thinks he’ll understand her. He always does. They haven’t really talked, just the two of them, for a while. Last night, they’d been too caught up with the aftermath of the fire and getting to Becca and Sam’s to really have any time for conversation. It’s hard to believe that just yesterday morning they’d been hiking up to the clearing, when things were still hopeful and bright. Maybe they can still be that way though; the radiant burning in Allie’s chest hasn’t subsided, perhaps even increased since looking at him. “You feeling okay?”

She knows he doesn’t mean physically — Gordie checked both of them out last night at the clinic and gave them some oxygen. Miraculously, they’re both unscathed, other than the smell of smoke that still lingers in Allie’s hair even after a shower. She shrugs. “It’s…complicated,” she says. “But when aren’t things complicated?”

Harry hums in agreement; he’s looking at her intently, like there’s something he has to say too and has been holding back on it for some time now. There’s a beat of silence between them, then they both end up blurting out simultaneously: “Can we talk?”

Allie grins, but Harry only lifts the corners of his mouth awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head.

“Okay, uh, what’s up?” Harry says. The smile he gives her is so fond and so sad that her heart breaks a little. She’s been so stupid.

“You go first,” Allie insists. She wants to end on her thing, give him something to think about since she has no idea what he’ll say. But she’s prepared to lay it all out there as it is and…well, she kind of has a suspicion that things might work out in her favor.

“Okay,” Harry sighs. He takes a deep breath, like he’s gearing up for something big. “I think…we should stop. This thing we have going on.” He gestures between the two of them. “In fact, I…uh. I’m stopping it.”

Allie’s breath stops short.

“…What?”

“I’m sorry, I know the timing is shit but…I’ve kind of been feeling this way for a while now, and — well…I just want to stop.”

She feels like the wind has been knocked from her lungs and the ground is crumbling beneath her feet. She hadn’t been expecting this — not at all, and it makes her temporarily forget all about her own revelation.

“Why?”

“If one person wants to stop, then we stop. No questions asked,” Harry replies. Allie goes cold — the rules. Her rules. She’d said that to him and they’d both agreed. She’d be a hypocrite if she didn’t follow her own dictum, even though it doesn’t make sense in her head, the pieces lining up and then falling apart, like finishing a puzzle save for one spot and finding that the only remaining piece left won’t fit, no matter how hard you try to jam it in.

Harry’s lips are set in a grim line and he doesn’t meet her eyes when she tries to search them, instead focusing on some spot on the ground.

Allie swallows dryly, her heart stuck somewhere in her throat, and says, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Harry echoes. He finally looks at her for the barest of moments and in his eyes, she can see so much — pain, regret, fondness, and something else, something deeper. But she’s not sure if she’s imagining it or not, or perhaps projecting her own senses onto him, because it only lasts for a split second before he blinks brushes past her and out onto the church lawn, head bowed and hands tucked inside his pockets.

The final burst of hope from the idea of the two of them together dwindles until it shrivels up and turns to dust, and Allie’s left standing there at the church, alone, staring at the spot where Harry had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a million thank yous to [still_i_fall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall) for a much needed look-over. a true gem!
> 
> writing that last part hurt me too, trust me!
> 
> this story is wrapping up soon. if you've come along for the journey so far: thank you ♡♡


	5. put your white tennis shoes on and follow me

Allie’s never been more miserable in her life.

The grief that came after Cassandra’s death had been all-consuming, like a thick fog that she couldn’t see past. But there was so much to do in the immediate aftermath, with her stepping up to become mayor and trying to piece the town back together. It’s not like she forgot, but Allie had something to throw herself into in the meantime until the fog, little by little, began to clear up until she got used to bearing its weight.

She doesn’t have that same distraction now — and it’s not the same type of grief or depression that consumes her. It’s more like a dull ache that constantly sits in the background of her mind. She can’t quite track how, but over the past few months, Harry Bingham had become a constant in her life, something she could always count on.

And now they’re not even friends.

In the weeks after Campbell’s death, Allie starts going to the weekly public forums, contributing when she has ideas that she thinks are helpful, like reinstating the Committee on Going Home, which has been stalled for some time now ever since the whole government shakeup over the winter, and listening when she doesn't. She also requests to join Grizz’s exploration committee full time. Part of her hopes that by spending her time in the clearing and away from town, she can get away from it all and dedicate herself to making sure their farming plan is viable. Growing season is set to start fairly soon, in just a couple of weeks, so there’s plenty to do. But instead, every time she gets to the field, she’s reminded of the way Harry had looked in the sunlight on that day, and how his hand had felt in hers.

Harry, meanwhile, has taken over the library shift. No one bats an eye that they’re on different work rotations now, parole or not. He’s also moved out, apparently to Kelly’s place while Allie stays at Becca and Sam’s. She’s a little surprised that he doesn’t go back to his own house, which still remains vast and empty since they’d left it behind after Allie’s rescue. But to be honest, she can’t really picture him there anymore — all alone, surrounded by mostly bad memories, stuck in his room again like he had been all of last autumn.

The worst part of it all is that she still sees him from time to time. He’d taken Grizz seriously with the offer to help design the cabin, and sometimes she sees the two of them talking together in the school gym, heads bent over sheets of drafting paper and surrounded by stacks of architecture books Harry had hauled over from the library. Some days, she tries to catch his eye from the other end of the linoleum basketball court, but often he glances at her for just a moment before sliding his gaze away, the look too quick for her to be able to discern anything from it.

She tries not to let it hurt. But it still does, whenever she catches him and Grizz discussing the cabin together, or whenever she spots him from across the cafeteria. He still sits alone or with Kelly, or now every so often with Grizz and Sam too, likely to continue discussing plans for the cabin. 

They'd been her own rules, after all, and he hadn't done anything strictly wrong. So what if he wanted to stop talking to her altogether because he was tired of sleeping with her? It's not like they'd been close friends before this all started — it was something that happened along the way. Now she recognizes that it must have been just because she was there, convenient. He'd felt responsible for her during her imprisonment, and then vice versa while she looked after his recovery and was in charge of his parole.

Anything meaning she might have attributed to the way he had touched her, the way he looked at her — well. She can recognize that as wishful thinking now. Her own subconscious can be powerful, even while she had been blind to her own desires.

He wants to move on with his life. She gets it. He's finally gotten his freedom back and is assimilating into life in town — people trust him again, he has a goal for the common good, and she's not going to hold him back from finding purpose in their new life.

They have too much baggage anyway, the two of them, she reasons with herself. It never would have worked out. And so Allie grits her teeth and tries her best to avoid him and to tell herself she's not angry, hurt, and sad at being stonewalled. It's making her miserable, putting on that front to the world, pretending like all is right when what she wants to do is yell at him and then maybe wrap her arms around him and never let go.

But he doesn't want that. And Allie knows how to respect people's boundaries, so she leaves it be. 

If there's one thing she's good at, it's avoiding her problems.

The people close to her seem to be able to sense that something's up. Will never talks about Harry in front of her, even when she and Harry had been together all the time, probably because he doesn't have anything good to say. He doesn't take advantage of that though when she visits him in the kitchen, catching up with her as normal, like nothing’s different. She never voices it, but she’s grateful that they can just be Allie and Will, the same friends they've always been.

One day while Allie is bent over her inventory notebook in the kitchen double checking the day's figures, Becca brings it up as she comes to fetch a bottle for Eden from the fridge.

"How's Harry doing these days?"

Allie consciously tries to tell her body not to freeze up or hint that anything is wrong. "He's fine, I guess. I wouldn't really know."

"Did you guys have a fight or something?" she questions.

"No," Allie says, trying not to sound defensive. It's the truth, in a sense. There was no fight — just an end.

"...So you guys just aren't friends anymore?" Becca pushes, sounding a little skeptical.

"We were never really friends," Allie mumbles.

Becca makes a humming noise like she doesn't quite believe it, but to Allie's relief, she lets the issue drop and leaves the kitchen with Eden's bottle.

The worst of it happens when, after a few weeks have passed, she gets confronted by Kelly, of all people.

Allie's in the room they've designated as hers in Becca's house (though she can tell that it had been the guest room in the real world from the generic-looking art, bare dresser, and bland bedspread) trying to sort through a bunch of clothing that a bunch of other girls in town have donated to her after the fire. Some of them are definitely not her style or size at all, so she's going through and finding the pieces she wants to keep and what she can give back. 

There's a knock on the door that Allie thinks must be Becca, but when she opens the door Kelly is there instead, with her usual ponytail and her arms crossed in front of her.

"Kelly," Allie says in surprise. "What's up?"

"Hey, Allie," Kelly says, uncrossing her arms, though there's still an uneasy look on her face. "Do you have a second?"

"Yeah, of course, is everything okay?" Allie opens the door wider, stepping aside to let Kelly in. The other girl doesn't come fully inside though, just taking a step so she's beyond the threshold but still practically in the doorway.

"I'm not sure, actually," Kelly says. There's a hard tone in her voice, and she scratches at her cheek for a moment before continuing. "Look, I know we haven't been together in a long time, but...Harry's still my friend. I care about him a lot."

Allie doesn't answer. She doesn't know where Kelly is going with this, and she's not sure she likes the direction.

"And...I don't appreciate him being so hurt," Kelly continues, getting to the point. She sounds a little accusatory, the implication there that Allie’s at fault for Harry’s hurt. "I don't like it. He's no saint, but he's been through a lot, just like all of us have. And he doesn't deserve that."

With that, she turns on her heel and whisks herself out of the room, arms still crossed in front of her once again. 

Allie is floored. First of all because Kelly — who is normally so sweet and mild-mannered — is angry at her. Has _told her off._ Second of all because what the hell does _Harry_ have to be hurt about? _He’s_ the one who ended things between them. That's totally Allie's line — she'd finally been ready to tell him how she feels and he had gone and cut the cord all on his own, a totally clean break, because he doesn’t even talk to her anymore.

After it happened, some part of Allie had thought that they would go back to the way things were before the agreement. They'd still been friendly then, all those early mornings spent hauling trash together, the first time he let her drive the car and they laughed the entire way home. She'd been ready to accept that, because at least that way Harry would still be a part of her life. But the very next day, he'd moved out and from then on put up a wall between them.

She has no idea what Kelly's talking about. And somehow, despite everything, she doesn't think Harry's the type to talk about her to Kelly behind her back, especially without revealing the nature of their relationship. So she can only infer that Kelly is making assumptions based on what she can observe; the two of them have suddenly stopped talking and stopped spending any time together, and supposedly Harry’s affected enough for Kelly to have noticed. 

She's just trying to look out for her friend, which Allie can understand. It's not Kelly's fault if she doesn't have the full context. The anger subsides, because Allie knows where Kelly is coming from, leaving behind a wallowing bleakness at the situation instead.

Alone again, she flops facedown on the bed and heaves a long, tired sigh into the sheets. Just when everything in the town is going right — spring is slowly and steadily creeping upon them, with days of rain and sudden bursts of warm sunshine growing more and more frequent, the council is doing a fantastic job keeping people fed, safe, and happy, the farm is just about to kick off — things in her personal life decide to come crumbling down. It's like she's not allowed to have both of them at the same time, as deemed by whatever cosmic forces have sucked them into this alternate dimension vortex.

She takes out her phone, and, as she so often does, goes through the photos. She’d scanned all the polaroids that she saved from the house fire so she can always have them with her now, along with the thousands of others she has from when life had still been normal. Selfies, memes, screenshots of conversations, pictures of her with family and friends, snapshots of everyday life. There are pictures from After, too, of baby Eden and Will and Sam, and hundreds of shots of plants and wildlife from the clearing that she takes for documentation purposes.

Somehow, despite all the time they've spent together, she doesn't have one of Harry. Not one of just him, not one of them together. Not even one where he's in the background, with how much he'd kept to himself during the early stages of his parole.

It makes her sad to think that there's no evidence that they'd even really known each other as well and as intimately as they did. Like if she forgot about it and moved on, it'd be like it never even happened.

Hesitating slightly, she pulls up her messages and clicks on her conversation with Harry. They never really texted each other; there was no need to, since they were around one another all the time. The last message is one from him from that night they babysat Eden.

_I’m sorry. We can pretend it never happened. Ok?_

God. It's so indicative of their current situation that it hurts.

She stares at the screen. Their chat history is tiny, small enough that she doesn't even have to scroll to be able to read it all. After Cassandra became the leader, she made everyone exchange numbers so they would know if and when they were needed at the church for any announcements. She didn't have him in her contacts before; she had no reason to. Something in her stomach tightens as she stares — this is all they boil down to, now: a bland introduction, an apology, and everything else left unsaid.

She hovers over the little bar where she can input a new message for a second before selecting it and typing, then deleting, then typing again, over and over, never hitting send.

_Hey._

_Haven't heard from you._

_Did you tell Kelly?_

_Did I do something?_

She sleeps her phone screen after that last one and squeezes the device so tight in her hand that she thinks the glass might crack. This is a bad idea.

But then Allie steels her nerves. She turns the screen on again, re-opens her messages, types out something before she can have second thoughts, and hits send.

_Allie Pressman: Kelly just yelled at me._

It's a strange message to send with no context, and part of her thinks that maybe he won't even reply. But he does mere seconds later, the message popping up before she can even move to toss her phone to the other end of the bed and stare at the ceiling while anxiety crawls inside her chest.

_Harry Bingham: ?_

She types out another quick text in response.

_Allie Pressman: About you. She thinks I upset you. Idk why_

_Harry Bingham: Ah. Sorry about that. I'll talk to her_

Allie doesn't think she needs to respond to that. She recognizes when there's a dead end in a conversation, and he doesn't text again with any follow ups about how she's doing or what she's up to. He wouldn’t, of course, outside of her own wild imagination that, lately, is only making her chest feel tighter and tighter every time she thinks about what could have been.

They'd been as good as strangers in the real world. Extreme circumstances brought them together here, but now that those extremities are over and things are finally settling into a groove that seems more and more permanent, she supposes it makes sense that they'll be as good as strangers once again. 

  


* * *

  


The day of their next weekly hike to the clearing is the first real day it feels like winter is finally over for good. It’s warm outside, properly warm, the sun shining and sky a picture perfect blue with streaks of these wispy, white clouds that look like strings of cotton candy. Allie hazards that it’s seventy, maybe even seventy two degrees outside and forgoes her usual heavy duty coat the day of the hike, donning a light jacket instead and pulling her hair up into a ponytail.

It's their final trip to the clearing just for surveying; next week, construction and tilling of the land is set to officially begin, with crews staying there overnight in tents in rotating three day shifts to save time taking the trip back and forth. Allie's excited; she really thinks they're going to be able to pull this off. Indoor growing has already begun, with Grizz setting up several community garden boxes inside the gym to kickstart the process, and when the land is ready, they'll move the little seedlings there for them to finish growing and for the harvest. There's a lot in store for the produce plans: corn grows well in the New England summer, as well as squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers. Allie can't wait — she doesn't remember the last time she ate something fresh.

When she meets up with the usual group at the soccer fields at nine in the morning sharp, there's an extra figure there. Harry.

He looks different. Freshly shaven, and his hair shorter than it had been when she'd last spotted him across the cafeteria. Probably Kelly's handiwork; certain parts are choppy, but it's a close approximation of what his hair had been like last summer, when they all first got to New Ham. With Allie, Harry hadn't ever let himself get quite as unkempt as he'd been in the fall, but his hair was wild, curling all around his ears and onto his forehead, except on the rare days he bothered running a comb and some product through it, and he often had a shadow of stubble across his jaw. She never minded the look (and secretly, she enjoyed the way it felt against her cheek, her neck, her thighs).

Seeing him now, looking like that — it makes her stomach go tight. It's so reminiscent of the early days, his slicked-back style during prom, his clean-cut blue button downs. But the way he carries himself is different now. He looks older, more serious, a heavier set to his shoulders, the lackadaisical, easy charm gone until someone speaks to him and he turns it on, smooth as ever.

He has a thick cardboard tube sticking out of the top of his backpack, which she assumes are blueprints for the cabin he and Grizz have been working on. She also assumes that must be why he's here right now.

No one told Allie he would be coming. It feels unfair, like a sucker punch to the gut. But of course, no one had any reason to tell her. She wonders if, had she known, she would have tried to get out of it somehow, faked sick or something, and then feels pathetic for having that thought at all. She can't avoid him forever; their town is literally made of two hundred people and one baby, and with their jobs so closely aligned, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

They don't speak or really acknowledge each other during the inbound hike. Thankfully, there's no real need to; Allie and Bean are busy double-checking inventory lists and making sure everything they need is already up at the clearing or otherwise set to be transported there soon. They've started gathering lumber after raiding all possible existing supplies from home improvement stores, but it's a big job. Plus new life is finally starting to grow on the trees, which are mostly still bare, but some have started to sprout small, pale green buds that in a few weeks time will bloom into flowers before settling into verdant leaves for the summer. That helps lift Allie's spirits a little, though Harry's presence still lingers in her periphery, ever aware of him just a couple yards ahead.

When they arrive, it's easy for her to fall into rhythm, go around the perimeter and check the supplies, make sure the rafter of wild turkeys (that are, unbelievably, not afraid of humans at all — though they have no reason to be, since they've never encountered humans before) are still wandering around somewhere, document everything. She's kind of like the organizational czar of the project, keeping a meticulous list of what they have, what they need, and where everything is kept. It reminds her of last summer, going through all the small shops in town to do food inventory all on her own, which she had actually liked doing before she got assigned to kitchen duty once work lists became an official thing.

At noon, Allie takes her packed lunch away from where a group of them — Harry included — have created a makeshift picnic on top of some unused tarps and walks the half mile to the lake instead. She sits on a log and stares out at the soft waves as she eats, wishing that she could stop noticing Harry out of the corner of her eye every time she turns around. He's nearly golden in the sunlight, and she curses herself for thinking that he still looks so good. That's a hopeless cause, she knows — she could never speak to him again for the rest of their lives, and Allie would still think he looked good.

Avoiding him only works until, sometime in the late afternoon, Grizz calls her over to where he and Harry are going over a blueprint at the makeshift workstation they created a few weeks ago, complete with plastic folding tables and camping chairs.

"Hey," Grizz greets her when she goes over, her eyes skittering over Harry quickly. She wonders if he can tell she's nervous; the answer is probably yes. He's always, always been able to read her. "Wanted to get your thoughts on this here."

"Okay," Allie says, leaning over to look at the blueprint. "I...don't really know a lot about architecture."

"Yeah, but you know this place, maybe even better than I do at this point — we're trying to decide where we should put the foundations down. Any thoughts?"

Allie furrows her brows and shuffles through the papers. They don't make a lot of sense to her, but she can see that the simple cabin ought to come together nicely. The more she looks at it, the more impressed she is; the plans account for the angle of the natural light over the entire place and how best to utilize it since there's no electricity, installing windows in the roof at exactly the right angles, planning for the land's drainage, and other details like that.

"This is...really good," Allie admits, not taking her eyes off the paper. She's acutely aware of Harry looking at her, perhaps gauging her reaction. The space between them feels heavy and thick, though she's one hundred percent certain that's all in her own head. The last time they interacted was the stilted text conversation about Kelly. "You guys did all this?"

"Not me," Grizz says, holding his hands up in front of him. "It was mostly Harry. He's a fuckin' genius."

"Oh," Allie says, then she turns to Harry because it would be rude not to. "You did a great job. This is really cool." She means it, and offers him a small smile.

"It was nothing," he mumbles, not meeting her eyes. He looks almost...bashful. Maybe he's just being awkward, though that's never been a trait Allie has known him to have.

"Okay, so what do you need from me?" she asks, turning back to Grizz.

"I guess, is there a spot out here that you think would be good and wouldn't mess with where we're farming? It's not too big, it won't take up a ton of space."

Allie squints out across the wide field, trying to assess. "Yeah, actually. I wouldn't put it over at the southeast corner, the drainage over there is pretty bad. Rainwater kind of collects like a swamp. The two other quadrants are being primed for farming since they're so flat and even but...you know, the northwest quadrant could actually work, right by the path to the lake. In time we might even be able to set up an irrigation system that goes from the water to the cabin, if this all works out."

"Wow," says Grizz. "Yeah, that sounds good to me. Harry?"

"You really know this place," Harry says to her, clearly impressed despite himself. Allie fights off her blush through sheer force of willpower.

"What can I say," she says. "I've spent a lot of time here."

He casts his eyes downwards at that — the reason she's spent so much time here is because of him. Because she's not spending it with him instead. He must know this, because he clears his throat, rolls up the papers, and makes his way to the northwest quadrant.

There's so much to be done that the group stays there past when they ought to. The sun has already begun to set by the time they start hiking back into town. It's lovely though, Allie thinks, the orange and pink filtering through the trees, dusting everything around them in soft pastels. The wispy clouds from earlier in the day have morphed into thick, heavy looking ones, so that none of the sky is actually visible, just clouds reflected in sunset colors.

She's being careless when it happens, busy checking her phone for when reception bars show up again so she can text Becca that they're on their way back now. Her foot catches on a rock, but her body doesn't seem to catch up with that fact. She takes another step forward and the momentum brings her stumbling down, throwing her hands out in front of her on instinct so she doesn't break the fall with her face. What she does instead is land on her ankle all wrong, the pain coming sharp and quick.

"Shit," she hisses, dusting dirt and rocks from her scraped hands before bending to examine her ankle. Nothing looks off, but pain shoots up her leg when she tries to move it.

"Allie!" Bean calls, the group noticing that she's on the ground behind them now. "Are you okay, what happened?"

"I'm fine," Allie mutters, her pride hurting more than anything else. "Just being clumsy. It's fine, I'm fine." But when she tries to get to her feet, she hisses in pain as her ankle refuses to cooperate, nearly collapsing when she tries to put some weight on it.

Immediately, there's an arm around her shoulders, steadying her in place. It's Harry; she doesn't have to turn her head to be able to tell. She's had that arm around her shoulders so many times before, she still remembers clearly the way her body fits into its bend.

"No, it's okay, I can make it on my own," she tries to protest, but her ankle sorely disagrees, throbbing once as if it has a mind of its own and can understand her.

"C'mon, Pressman," he mutters, sounding resigned. He unshoulders his backpack, which Bean grabs, and then hoists her onto his back. Allie, face burning, reluctantly lets him, but only because it really seems like she can't walk, she tells herself firmly. It feels so undignified, her arms wrapped loosely around his shoulders and his arms gripping tight under her knees, but she knows her hobbling along would only slow them down. It's already getting dark, fast, and they need to get back to town.

"Thanks," she mumbles once they start moving, but Harry just hums in acknowledgement.

About halfway to town, the rolling pink clouds gathered overhead finally open up, and it starts to rain. Just a light drizzle, nothing heavy, enough to dot their clothes and hair with little wet spots, but not to soak them through. Everything starts to smell fresh and earthy, and Allie tries hard not to stare at the droplets gathered on Harry's long eyelashes from his side profile. She's so close to his face, closer than she's been in weeks. It's intoxicating; the skin of his neck is right there, within reach of her fingertips, dotted with rain. His scent mixes with that of the earth around them and, in another world, she might have pressed her lips to the spot just below his ear, tasted the rainwater lingering on its surface. She wonders if she's imagining the tension still between them.

A muscle in his jaw jumps once, twice, and his hands flex under her thighs. Or maybe she imagines that, too.

Then Allie blinks, returning to herself — God, she needs to get over him. She needs to.

But it's so difficult when he's solid against her like this, supporting her weight in his arms, rain falling all around them in the forest as the day melts into night. She wants to bury her face into his neck and pretend like she’s allowed to do that, like it’s normal. She's good at pretending.

He brings her all the way to the clinic after they stop at the school to put down their things; Allie had insisted that she could make it on her own now that they were back, but Harry had wordlessly gone over to his car with the expectation that she would follow. She does.

By now, after a solid thirty minutes spent in the rain, they're both decently wet, dripping onto Maserati's expensive leather seats and smearing mud from their shoes onto the carpeting as they drive over to the clinic. Allie doesn't know why Harry's helping her. He has an indecipherable expression on (the mask, oh how she'd forgotten about the mask) and never takes his eyes off the road as they drive along, the rain pattering soft and calm against the windshield. The contrast between all the other times she’s been in his car and now is stark. She wishes she could open the windows like she did on that bitterly cold night before their first garbage collection shift, anything to lift this invisible fog inside the car that makes him feel miles away even though he’s right here next to her, but it’s still raining and she doesn’t think Harry will appreciate even more water whipping inside the vehicle.

They pull up to the clinic, which at this time of night is completely dark. No one else is in the parking lot, meaning that Gordie still hasn’t arrived after Grizz called him as soon as their group arrived back. Allie’s not sure whether she should open the door and hobble inside, or if Harry’s going to get out and help her, or if they’re just going to sit here in silence.

It turns out the answer is none of those things, because Harry, against all her expectations, speaks.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he says, looking down at his lap instead of looking at her. Outside, the rain grows louder, pattering against the car windows in a steady, staccato beat as it graduates from just a drizzle into an earnest shower. Though he pauses, it doesn’t seem like he’s done, so Allie waits. “I’m sorry. If I…upset you. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Oh.” Allie doesn’t know what to say to that, nor what brought this on all of a sudden. Maybe it has to do with his conversation with Kelly that he supposedly had. In any case, it seems like he’s always apologizing to her — after Cassandra, after the coup, and now this. Weirdly, she still hasn’t gotten used to it. “It’s okay,” she says, even though it kind of isn’t. Even though she still has this ache inside of her whenever she thinks about him. But he apologized, and she wants to let it go and move on, she really does, only…she bites her lip.

“If you didn’t want to be friends with me, you could have just said so earlier,” she mumbles. Fuck. She didn’t want to say that out loud, but it’s been in her head for so long now. Her gaze is focused on her hands in her lap, picking idly at her thumbnail so she can avoid having to look at him.

But he looks at her, then — she can see it in her periphery. Her eyes don’t leave her hands, because she doesn’t want to see whatever expression he’s wearing.

“That’s not why,” Harry says, a little more firmly. “Allie…you have to know that’s not why.”

Allie shrugs halfheartedly. She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.

“I—“ He clenches his jaw, the words seemingly stuck in his throat. And then, with some difficulty, “I don’t know how to be friends with you. I don’t know if I can.”

He sounds — frustrated, like he’s trying to get something through to her. She doesn’t know what it is, can barely parse together the meaning of his words, her heart coiling tight around itself in her chest. She wants out of the car, wants to run home in the rain, _her_ home, now just a pile of ash and debris, wants to run all the way back to the past to where things between them were uncomplicated.

 _That’s never been the case_ , her mind tells her. And she can’t get out — she’s stuck in the car with Harry and maybe a broken ankle and nowhere to run.

There’s a knock against the passenger side window then that startles the both of them in their seats. Allie jolts against her seatbelt, snapping her head up to see Gordie, hunched in on himself in the rain, outside the car and gesturing for them to open the door.

Harry remains silent as Gordie helps her out of her seat, slinging her arm around his shoulders and hopping inside the clinic with his help and on her good foot.

Before she enters, Allie looks back over her shoulder, but she can’t see Harry inside the car — just the rain reflecting in silver streaks against the bright headlights. 

  


* * *

  


It's been a while since Allie's dreamt about Harry.

He'd been a prominent figure in her nightly subconscious for some time now, dating past when they struck up their ill-fated tryst, back when Allie had been just an overthrown, imprisoned ex-leader. He was watching her as the crowd threw rocks at her, unmoving; he was talking to her in the Bingham kitchen, black clouds pressing in all around them; he was on her in his car, the air oppressive and nearly incandescent.

Allie had always been able to recognize those as what they were when she woke up, though: dreams, nightmares, or some uneasy combination of both. In all cases: not real, the line between her imagination and reality clear in the sand. There had always been some detail that felt off, something that's not quite right that makes it easy to identify.

(Those dreams — or at least what they symbolized — had all, in some kind of way, come true. Part of Allie wonders if they'd actually been premonitions.)

That's not the case with this dream.

In this dream, there's no off-kilter detail, no quirk in the environment to give away that it's woven from the fabric of Allie's mind. No, it's all painstakingly, achingly real. And it goes on for so long that, it's incredibly difficult to determine what's real and what's not.

They're together, in every sense of the word, in the cabin in the clearing, which is all finished and lived-in. Allie's rescued polaroids dot the wall on one side of the entrance, and on a rickety bookshelf sits Harry's father's collection of American literature and the popsicle stick-frame picture of Harry and Lucy. Harry himself kisses her neck playfully as she pulls her shoes on. She scolds him for slowing her down, but only laughs when he does it again, and again.

Outside, Allie works on the garden boxes behind the house, harvesting vines laden with fat tomatoes, bright and nearly bursting, and wild strawberries from the bushes by the lake. Harry wanders back from the fields in the late afternoon, arms heavy with ears of sweet white corn that they put in barrels to deliver into town tomorrow. They make out against the cabin under the sunlight, sweat sticking Allie's hair to her temples and to the nape of her neck, where Harry has his hand curled so tenderly. For dinner, they gorge themselves on summer vegetables and then they sleep and wake up and do it all over again.

There are tears pricking at the corner of Allie's eyes when she wakes up and realizes she's not in the cabin because it doesn't exist yet, and it's barely spring, let alone summer, and she and Harry aren't like that. She knows that place: it's the other world. Maybe it’s even the same as the one she mentioned to Harry before the debate last fall, but it's certainly not this one.

Ever since coming to grips with the reality of New Ham and the strange parallel dimension they've been thrown into, Allie's sort of found comfort in the idea of millions of other worlds where millions of things could happen. In one, she's still at home with her parents. In another, Cassandra is still the leader and Allie's still in her shadow. In yet another, she and Harry are actual friends, maybe even mayors together. In the one she just dreamt about, they're something else entirely.

But the thought doesn't comfort her this time. It just makes her sad.

All those other dreams may well have been premonitions, or perhaps markers of what was to come. But this one, Allie's certain, is just plain wishful thinking.

Thankfully, her ankle isn’t broken, just twisted.

She and Gordie had a time figuring out the x-ray machine and making absolutely certain that she wasn’t going to accidentally get radiation poisoning. Gordie and Kelly have apparently been figuring out how to work all the various medical machinery for weeks, but Allie had still insisted on doubling up on the heavy lead blankets, even though they’d made her feel like she was suffocating. Neither she nor Gordie are exactly experts, but when the prints come out, it’s clear to see that the bone isn’t broken.

It’d been a relief to say the least; Allie being out of work would be a huge setback for the project, not to mention the unknown medical territory that came with actually properly setting and fixing a broken bone.

Her official prescription from the office of Dr. Moreno is ice packs and elevation — the school nurse’s remedy, Gordie had called it. She’s confined to hobbling around the house on one foot until her ankle recovers. Truth be told, Allie feels fine enough to gingerly walk on it the next day, though it’s swollen at the joint and still stings if she puts too much pressure on it. Becca keeps her company during the day, the two of them taking turns bottle feeding Eden and watching old VHS tapes of nature documentaries Becca had dug up from the basement, a frozen bag of peas slowly dripping into her socks as she stretches her leg out on top of a mound of pillows.

Harry is still on her mind. Once or twice, Becca seems like she wants to bring it up, opening her mouth with what looks like intention before closing it again. She must have heard about how he’d carried Allie back. Half of Allie almost wants her to ask just so she can have someone with whom to talk about all of it — how confused she is, how unsure, how the mixed signals are throwing her for a loop, how much she can’t stop missing him even though they haven’t really been apart all that long. And it’s not just the physical part — hardly that at all, if anything. She misses being his friend. The easy way they would joke. The sound of his laugh. The way they knew how to be serious with one another, the way they understood each other, perhaps better than anyone else in town.

She looks at her phone a lot, at the photos of the clearing, at how much it’s changed in the past few weeks. It’d mostly been bare the first time she saw it that day with Harry, just a wide open expanse of sky and grass that had been breathtaking. Now, there are supplies and work stations lined all along the perimeter, stacks of tools, lumber, fertilizer, and more — even a small John Deere utility vehicle that Jason had unearthed in his parents’ tool shed. 

It’s just all just a distraction, really, from the fact that looking at the photos remind her of her dream. How real it had been. She hates that if the internet were still a thing, she’d most definitely be going through Harry’s Instagram account right now.

On the third day, the sprain feels infinitely better. Allie’s able to walk around normally without any pain, provided she doesn’t hop one-footed on her bad ankle. Gordie forces her to stay inside for another day though, just to practice an abundance of caution. It’s bullshit, she thinks, but she begrudgingly agrees after he threatens to get Will involved.

In the span of her time spent at home, she’s debated multiple times on texting Harry, ultimately deciding against it every time. She doesn’t even know what she’d say. Their last conversation hadn’t exactly been productive; if anything, it’d left Allie feeling more confused and bereft than ever. But every time she opens up their dismally short chat history, her heart jumps in her chest, like she’s about to dive straight off a cliff, and her palms get sweaty and she ends up closing out of the window. What can she even send him? Irrationally, Allie’s afraid to even click into the chat window and type a potential message for fear that he’ll see the three dots appear on his screen, even though logically she knows that’s not how SMS text messages work with no internet.

It’s while she’s agonizing over this for what feels like the thousandth time, sitting at the kitchen table as Becca takes Eden for a walk in the stroller, that Kelly comes in and makes herself known at the edge of the kitchen. Allie doesn’t realize she’s leaning against the wall until she clears her throat, her hands folded in front of her and a bag slung over her shoulder. The phone drops from Allie's hands, clattering against the table as her head snaps up in surprise; she feels distinctly like she's been caught doing something wrong and feels vaguely guilty, though from the outside she knows it probably hadn't seemed like she was doing anything other than looking at her phone.

"Kelly! What are you doing here?"

She's still not sure where she and Kelly stand. They haven't seen each other or spoken since Kelly last came to berate her over Harry, even though Allie doesn't hold that against her. The other girl is nothing but kind and good-natured, and she'd been only looking out of Harry's best interests.

"Hey," Kelly says uncertainly, shifting on her feet and looking a little nervous. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

"No, it's okay," Allie assures her. "Are you looking for Becca? She took Eden outside for a walk — I can call her if you want—"

"No, no. That's not why I'm here," Kelly says, coming over and pulling out a chair at the table next to Allie. "I'm here to talk to you, actually."

Allie feels her lips pressing in a line together, uncertain. Kelly notices too, because she lays a hand on the table and leans forward. "No, I'm — I'm not here to yell at you again. The opposite, actually. I'm here to...apologize. I think I was a little out of line the other day, and I don’t know the full context about anything that happened between you and Harry, so it wasn't right for me to come after you like that. I'm sorry." She looks earnest, her eyes wide and sincere.

"It's okay," Allie says, shrugging one shoulder. People apparently have a knack for apologizing to her these days, even though she doesn't necessarily feel like she's owed one. "I mean...nothing really happened between us, but I get that you were just trying to look out for your friend. No hard feelings."

"Wait, what? You mean...really nothing was going on with you two?"

Allie bites her lip — she debates, but decides to go with the truth. Or some version of it, at least, with a couple details left out. She trusts Kelly to be able to keep it to herself, especially since she’s so close with Harry as well. "I mean...okay, we were sleeping together for a while. But nothing else. And then...he called it off. And that's it." It feels weird to say out loud. She can hear how dejected her own voice sounds, and she hates it.

Kelly, meanwhile, has a look on her face that resembles sympathy — or maybe even pity. "Oh, Allie," she sighs. "Do you really think that's it?"

"What do you mean? It was his call. What else is there supposed to be?"

"And are you happy with that call?"

"I mean—I'm not sure. I don't know." She chews on her lip some more, and then admits, "No."

It feels liberating to say. Like a weight that she hadn’t even known was there has been lifted from her chest, so accustomed was she to its presence, and only now can she finally breathe properly. She studies Kelly for any trace of judgement, but there’s none.

"Allie," Kelly says emphatically, placing her hand over Allie's on the kitchen table. "I've known Harry for a long time. He might seem like he just says whatever's on his mind at all times, but...that's not always how it is. Especially with big things like this."

"Like this...?"

Okay, that's definitely pity on her face now, like she feels sorry for Allie for not being able to understand the way Harry Bingham's mind works. She resents that a little and, for the first time, begins to feel a little jealous that Kelly can apparently see something in him that she can’t. "He brought it up to me after I talked to you here the other day, said it wasn't your fault and that I shouldn't have done that, but he didn't say anything else. But I think...I'm starting to get it now."

"Get _what_?" Allie asks, wanting to tear her hair out. She loves Kelly, she does, but all this beating around the bush is driving her to the edge.

"Oh, Allie," she says again, and then presses her lips together in hesitation. "I—look, it's not really for me to say. I think that you should go talk to him."

“Don’t think he wants to talk to me,” she mumbles, looking down at the table.

Kelly sighs. “He’s asked me about you, you know,” she says after a pause. “Here and there. He’s bad at making it seem offhanded.”

Allie’s not really convinced with what Kelly’s trying to sell. “He’s the one who ended it,” she reminds her. “He’s the one who stopped talking to me. I want to respect that.”

Kelly seems to think for a second, and then reaches down to her canvas tote bag to pull something out. It’s a tin Folgers can of instant coffee, the kind that Harry had detested. He’d made a face when he’d seen cans of them in Allie’s cupboards, pushed towards the back after the more choice selection of roasts had finally begun to dwindle. It was for desperate occasions, used only by her dad when he had to work late at home, she explained, but he’d said that it wasn’t even worth using for that. For lawn fertilizer, maybe.

“He wanted to give you this,” Kelly says, pushing the can over to her. “Well, I mean. I’m pretty sure he wanted me to. I kind of took it without asking.”

Allie doesn’t know what to make of this gift, of something Harry had hated, and that Kelly’s not even sure is actually meant for her. She looks at it, puzzled. 

“Open it,” Kelly insists, seeing her confusion.

Gingerly, Allie slides the can closer to her; it feels light, not at all like it’s full of powdered coffee grounds. Not knowing what to expect inside, she peels back the plastic lid and is met with a whole bunch of dried, shriveled up flowers.

Dandelions.

All at once, Allie remembers: she mentioned it in an offhand comment once, a few days before they were set to head up to the clearing for the first time. The house was steadily running out of tea; the loose leaf specialty kind had run out weeks ago, and she’d been down to going through boring bags of Lipton lemon, which she drank only as a last resort. She was telling him how sad little things like that made her — that soon, all she could drink would be bags of common grocery store blends, boring flavors like English Breakfast. How she’d been reading up on plants and how dandelions could be brewed into tea, how their roots could even be finely cut and roasted, how maybe she would collect some once they started to grow in the spring.

It was really the type of thing she’d only said in passing, no real intention to put it into action. Allie had been fully prepared to settle into a boring life of just lemon and English Breakfast tea forever.

She’s speechless as she looks at the little flowers, their dried yellow petals curled in on themselves, waiting to unfurl and bloom for the last time in a cup of hot water. She imagines Harry, surreptitiously picking dandelions throughout town and in the clearing. They’ve been cropping up everywhere now that it’s finally warmer outside and there are no municipal workers to keep the weeds at bay on the green and on other patches of grass. In fact, the grass all over town is starting to grow wild, patches of it growing tall, wildflowers and other invasive plants starting to sprout their way through the topsoil. The idea of Harry picking through them, in search of these little bursts of yellow…her heart clenches painfully in her chest, and she realizes that she’s gone far too long without speaking, just staring at the inside of the can.

Kelly looks curious, but doesn’t ask what about the contents or what they mean. Allie appreciates it. She swallows her heart down the back of her throat when she closes the lid carefully.

“Good gift?”

Wordlessly, Allie nods. Kelly had said she’d swiped the can behind Harry’s back…but unless he’d somehow switched from coffee to tea (which she knows would never happen), there’s no mistaking that it’s clearly meant for her. But…he hadn’t wanted to give it to her just yet. Or maybe he never planned on it at all — Kelly did steal it after all. 

Her head is beginning to hurt from the effort of her overthinking.

“Thanks for this, Kelly,” she says. “We’re really lucky to have someone like you here, with us. Becca’s lucky. Harry’s lucky. I’m lucky.”

Kelly blushes. “I’m just trying to do what I think is right. And you’re my friend too, Allie…I want my friends to be happy.”

Allie smiles, poking the edge of the can with her index finger. She still can’t stop thinking about Harry, picking dandelions all over.

“So…you’ll talk to him?” Kelly tries again hesitantly.

“I’ll—I’ll think about it,” she says. Then after a beat, she amends, “Yeah. Yes. I’ll try.”

Allie has the all clear the next morning to go back to work, but she skips. 

Technically it’s not allowed, and maybe she’s a little bit of a hypocrite for playing hooky, but Grizz doesn’t text her or anything to ask where she is (Allie’s pretty sure that the core group in which she’s found herself these days — Grizz, Sam, Becca, and Kelly — they all talk, and there’s a good chance Grizz has some idea what’s going on with her).

Instead, she heads to the library, where Harry is still on duty. Now that spring is well and truly here, people are busier than ever, leaving less time for the books and the studying that they spent all winter doing, trying to come up with ways for the town to survive. Still, there’s always someone on staff to keep a catalogue of what’s checked out and what’s available, and to comb through the stacks to find anything useful. 

He’s sitting at the center circular when she gets there, head bent over a thick tome on architecture, surrounded by various other books on architectural history, farming, plant life, hunting, outdoor survival, and more. She doesn’t know if he heard her come in or not, or whether he knows it’s her rather than any random person coming in for research.

He’s wearing one of those blue pinstriped button downs he’s so fond of, and with his haircut, a few errant locks falling forward across his brow as he tilts his head down to read, it brings her all the way back. He almost looks like he could just be a student working here at the local library, studying in between patrons coming up to the checkout counter. Something in her chest aches at the concept — they’d be strangers, but there’s a beauty to it, too. Like one of those other worlds.

“Thanks for the tea,” she says, ambling up to the desk and interrupting his reading. She’d made a cup this morning; it was quite weak, as far as tea went, but it had an amazing scent and a light flavor, sweet notes hidden in the undertone. And not to mention the aesthetics of the flowers floating in the water had been very pleasing. Allie had to stop herself from finding some kind of metaphor in that, the flower floating in the middle of her cup — she’s been doing that a lot lately, overthinking everything, and it makes her feel far away, untethered from reality. The here and now — which is to say, her standing in front of the circular and Harry looking up at her, a page held loosely between his index and middle fingers as a placeholder.

A muscle in his jaw jumps, his mouth stuff at the corners. Is he actively frowning? “Kelly wasn’t supposed to give you that,” he mutters a bit sourly.

“It was really thoughtful,” Allie tells him. “I forgot that I even mentioned dandelions to you.”

“Yeah, lucky for you I have a steel trap in here,” he says, tapping his temple. “It’s a blessing and a curse.”

“Yeah,” Allie replies, surprised that he’s being cooperative, falling back into their easy rhythm. “Must be so hard being you, huh?”

“You have no idea, Pressman,” Harry says, only now there’s an ironic edge in his voice. Like part of it is true, but he’s not allowed to acknowledge it out loud unless he coats it in a layer of sardonic humor. 

Allie laughs at that, just a chuckle in the back of her throat. But it feels like the first time she’s smiled and meant it for a while now; part of it is because this conversation is giving her a small bit of hope that what she came here to do will work out, after all, and they’ll be friends again. She can settle for that. Their camaraderie has always come naturally, just like now.

Harry, though, cracks a smile back at her for just the barest of moments before he seems to remember himself. Clearing his throat, he quickly looks away, down at his book so he can mark the page with a placeholder. “So what are you here for, Pressman? Need a book on ankle remedies?”

“Ah, no,” she says, her cheeks going slightly pink as she remembers the direct aftermath of her sprained ankle. “It was just a sprain. I can walk just fine now. Obviously,” she says, gesturing down at herself and the fact that she walked in here. “Um, no, I actually — I was hoping that…maybe we could talk? If you have a minute?”

“…Kelly put you up to this,” he says after a second. He sounds wary; it’s not a question.

“No,” Allie insists. “I mean, well, yes, she wanted me to. But I’m here because I want to be.”

The Harry from just a few seconds ago, who had the corners of his mouth lifted upwards as he idly joked with her, instantly is gone. He’s replaced with the mask, this one looking uncertain, like an animal with its guard up around an unknown presence. Is it a threat or not? Is it a predator or prey?

“I just…wanted to say,” Allie begins, hand automatically going up to nervously fidget with the tip of her ear. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

“Sorry…?” He sounds uncomprehending.

“For whatever I did. To make you…end things,” she explains, eyes skittering away from his and focusing on some point behind his shoulder instead. “We don’t have to do that anymore, but…I’m not loving the way things are right now, either. So I’m sorry. And I know this is cliche since we’ve literally already done this, but do you think we could maybe just…start over? For real this time?”

She hadn’t meant to ramble, but once she opened her mouth, the words kind of just kept tumbling out until they got to her root question, the main thing she came here to find out.

“…No?”

For a second, Allie doesn’t understand. He’s saying the word like it’s obvious, like it’s a _duh, of course_ kind of thing. She’s thrown for a loop.

“What? Why not?”

Harry shuts his book with a dull thud, standing up so they’re level instead of him looking up at her while he’s seated. There’s still the desk between them, forcing them to be at a distance. “You really don’t understand, do you, Pressman?” he asks with a dry, humorless laugh.

“No,” she says, feeling herself getting angry. Against her will, pressure starts building behind her eyes, tears of frustration welling at their corners. She blinks forcefully, hoping to drive them back. “No, I don’t.”

“I don’t want to _’start over’_ with you. I can’t do that,” he grits out, running a hand through his hair. “We tried that and it obviously didn’t fucking work. But I couldn’t—I can’t go on like that.”

“Like what?” Allie asks, desperation creeping into her voice. “What was wrong with what we had? Why can’t we just be friends again?”

“We can’t!” Harry snaps, raising his voice. “I can’t be _friends_ with you. I—“ he swallows dryly, “I want more than that. And I can’t pretend that I don’t anymore. Do you know how hard it is? To watch someone you love run _inside_ of a burning building? I was fucking out of my _mind_ imagining what could have happened that night — what I would have done if I’d lost you…” he trails off, suddenly losing all his steam, staring hard down at the table rather than at her. “But you don’t feel the same. And I couldn’t keep doing it after that night. It just wasn’t fair…to myself. So I’m _trying_ to get over you.” He looks up at her then, mouth set in a firm line, nearly accusatory. “But you won’t let me.”

Allie is stunned. She doesn’t know what to say. She opens her mouth once, then closes it, then opens it again, aware that she must look like a fucking goldfish. The tears are back, pressing in at the edges of her eyes. She feels locked in place, rooted to one spot by Harry’s words — he’d spoken quickly, all out in a rush, like the thoughts had been festering inside him for a long, long time now, and part of her is still trying to parse them all together, but her head suddenly seems to be full of a heavy, numbing buzz.

Harry studies her reaction for just a second before ducking his head down, trying to hide what looks like final disappointment, before roughly gathering an armful of the books stacked around him and muttering something about needing to get them to Grizz. She’s still standing there fixed by the time he’s gone.

There’s a word pinging around her head from his speech, knocking relentlessly into the corners of her mind, throwing her entire worldview off balance.

_To watch someone you love._

_Someone you love._

Love.

Harry _loves_ her.

Allie feels so, so incredibly stupid. 

  


* * *

  


When Allie's body finally catches up to her mind and she finds it in herself to move again, her first thought is to go after Harry.

Either that, or begin hitting her head against the wall repeatedly. She feels like an utter fool.

It's midmorning by the time she reaches the school gymnasium where Grizz is normally posted up. He greets her when she bursts through the doors, swiveling her head around, her cheeks pink from having rushed straight there from the town library, but she ignores him. It's clear that Harry isn't here; just an abundance of extra farming and outdoor supplies, with one section of the floor blocked off for the rows of plastic trays of little starter vegetables that are beginning to sprout fresh, pale green little stems from their small soil dishes.

She turns on her heel without a word and heads out, maybe even while Grizz is in the middle of talking to her, but she doesn't care. She has a single-minded focus right now: find Harry.

She tries Kelly's house next, but no one even answers the door. Kelly's probably out at the clinic, since it is the middle of the day. The driveway is empty, which means Harry's also probably not there unless he's gone through great lengths to hide from her.

Allie looks all over town. The cafeteria, the library again, town hall, the church and the graveyard behind it, even the ashy ruins of her old house, decaying and blackened in the spring sunlight. There's a slim chance he's up at the clearing doing a final survey of the land, but no one is set to go up there today and under no circumstances are they allowed to venture out into the forest alone, with what happened to Emily last summer. She tries going to the soccer field to see if he's milling around there, but all that's there is the flattened patch of grass on an otherwise overgrown field where they normally stand around and put their heavy backpacks down while coming and going on their weekly trips.

It's nearing evening by the time she decides to check one last place, bottom on her list of likely locations just because he's never there anymore, so untethered is it from his identity nowadays, a direct contrast to his worldly attachment to it when they first arrived in New Ham. She's exhausted from having run all around town in search of him, and frustrated, and still so unbelievably _angry_ at herself for her own blindness.

Texting or calling Kelly or anyone else had been a brief consideration of hers for a while, but she threw the idea away quickly. She doesn't really want anyone knowing she's looking for him right now, purely for selfish reasons — she wants this to be _hers_ , just for a little while. And the fact that it's painful to admit aloud just how blind and dense she's been this entire time. Apparently, she's become a master at lying to herself in the nearly full year they've spent in this alternate reality.

Telling herself that she didn't need to worry about anything. That Cassandra would be able to take care of everything. That she could be a good leader, that she could fill the void. That people were happy and hopeful under her rule — those were lies of necessity that she had to tell to convince herself and others that they'd simply be able to survive. But evidently, it didn't stop there — Allie's become accustomed to lying about things she's not ready to confront. Boxing them up and shoving them into a dusty corner of her mind where she can forget about them.

Harry, for so long, has been put into one of those boxes. She thought he would be fine there, that maybe she could take him out from time to time and then put him back in again, and things could go on like that for as long as she wanted. How selfish — how naive. She ignored that he didn't want to be in the box. She ignored when she started not wanting him to be there, either.

Always pretending. Pretending she could be aloof and cool. Pretending that she wasn't using him for just one thing. Pretending she didn't notice the depth of his emotions, until she completely convinced herself that they weren't even there.

Pretending that she hasn’t been in love with Harry this entire time.

Here, running along the sidewalk leading to the Bingham house, where the grass is growing long and untamed, wildflowers and dandelions dotting every lawn that had been so perfectly manicured and trimmed once upon a time, she can finally, finally admit it.

This is more than the urge she felt in the church that day after Campbell's service. This is more than just wanting to _be with_ him, give them a shot, like she wanted to suggest to him that afternoon.

Even then, she hadn't realized how immense this is, how world-shattering, how all-consuming.

This is it. This is Love, the kind with a capital L, the kind where the other person is all you can think about and all you _want_ to think about and not being with them is like losing a part of yourself. The kind that Harry, she now knows, has probably been feeling all this time. That he's been pushing down, adapting to _her_ needs, which apparently boiled down to just sex.

She finally gets it. Why he felt the need to end it. She can't even imagine what it would be like to be on the other side — watching Harry running _towards_ danger, full speed, head on, regardless of the desperation from the person watching him go.

The Maserati is in the huge circle drive of the old Bingham house. Vines are starting to creep up the exterior siding, along the bricks and pillars of the front entrance’s overhang. The front door is open when she tries it; there's a fine layer of dust coating the surface of everything the moment she steps gingerly inside, not bothering to close the door behind her. An early evening breeze rushes in, swirling eddies of dust particles into the air, the cavernous drawing room glinting in the golden hour. Everything else looks nearly the same — pictures hung just so, expensive leather couches and old mahogany Chippendale chairs placed exactly where they'd been left.

Harry’s in his room, crouched down at the foot of his bookshelf. Much of its contents, along with everything on his desk, is packed away in the several boxes that are spread out along the floor. The bed still remains, as do a lot of the smaller objects lying here and there — high school debate trophies, random posters of cars, inexplicably what looks like a stack of solid gold bricks. In one of the boxes lies a bundle of photographs, the childishly framed photo of Harry and Lucy carefully placed on top. Underneath, she recognizes the stack of his father's collection of books and vinyls.

It’s everything important to him — all the memories of his family, reminders of his past life. These are his polaroids, his wedding ring and matching necklace. The things that tether him from this reality to the old one. He’s collecting them all, packing them away in these heavy duty cardboard moving boxes, taking just this critical selection and leaving everything else behind.

"You're leaving," she says aloud as the realization dawns on her. "You're moving into the cabin they're building."

He hadn't looked up when she appeared in the doorway, continuing to sort through the things on the bottom-most shelf: they look like albums, she thinks, the old leather bound kind, maybe of family photos from generations past. But he stands when she speaks, dusting his hands off, not turning away from the bookshelf.

"Someone has to," he says, confirming her theory. "Might as well make myself useful somewhere, you know."

"Harry..."

"Why are you here, Allie?" he says sharply. "I thought I made myself pretty clear."

"You did," she says, stepping fully inside the room. It brings her back — the nights she spent curled on the floor in a nest of blankets that's now gone, just over there. How she cried in the shower that first night, bewildered and her bones aching from Luke's basement. Her nightmare. His quiet, solemn presence next to her. How he would return late at night, smelling of whiskey and regret. The night they danced.

"Harry. I'm sorry," she says, almost in a whisper.

He gives a sardonic laugh. "Think you tried that one already."

"No," she insists. "No, I...just. I've been so stupid. I didn't see." She pulls her bottom lip in between her teeth, worrying it for a second before continuing. "I really didn't know until you spelled it out for me. I've been such an idiot. A complete fucking idiot."

He looks at her, something like disbelief mixed with wonder in his eyes.

"But now," Allie says, her hands trembling. "Now I get it."

He's standing very still as she approaches him, but he goes with her when she takes his hand in hers. His fingers don't curl around hers, the muscles lax, like he's just letting her hold his hand without holding hers back. But still, he follows when she weaves her way around the boxes scattered around, over to where there's a small space of empty floor by the foot of the bed. He lets her wrap her arms around his middle and rest her cheek against his chest, even brings his hands up so very tentatively around her waist, like he's not sure if he's allowed to but is chancing it anyway.

Allie begins to sway them ever so gently, a re-creation of that night so long ago. Only this time, his father's record player is tucked away at the bottom of one of those boxes, as are all of the vinyls of old crooners. The only sound in the room comes from the soft evening wind blowing gentle against the western-facing windows, and their own breathing. The room is full of sunlight this time too, golden hour spilling in and bathing everything in an ethereal glow. She breathes in; he still uses the same shampoo, the same aftershave.

"How long?" she murmurs, tucking her chin more securely against his chest.

He breathes a soft laugh. "I don't know. Maybe since the first time we did this."

She nods, feeling the fabric of his shirt against her face. For Allie, there's no concrete answer. There's no one, single moment she can pinpoint as the moment where she fell.

Falling in love with Harry was something that happened entirely unknown to her, naturally developing all on its own. Like growing taller. Like growing older.

She draws back from his chest so she can look at his face. He still looks nearly disbelieving, but now she can finally see it — that unknowable quality, the depth that she sometimes would catch glimpses of here and there but could never exactly define, it's there in his eyes now. But finally, she knows what it is.

Ever so carefully, ever so slowly, he tilts his head down until his forehead is pressing against hers, warm and heavy.

"In case I have to spell it out for you again," he says quietly, each word breathing across her face, "I'm in love with you, Allie Pressman."

She smiles, marvelling at how foolish the both of them have been, how long it’s taken them to get to this very moment in time.

"And I'm in love with you, Harry Bingham."

When they finally kiss, Allie tries her best to commit it to memory. It's not like any of the ones they've already shared, and it's not like how any of those almost-kisses would have been. It's sweet and dear and she feels _loved_ , his hands cupped around her face, hers stroking the soft, newly-shorn hair at the nape of his neck, sunlight spilling all around them in his bedroom, surrounded by boxes of his memories. 

  


* * *

  


Spring is melting away into summer by the time the cabin is finished enough for people to be able to move in.

It'd been a herculean effort, along with tilling the land for the season's very first harvest, but somehow they've managed to pull it off. As the days grow longer and the sun grows hotter, sure enough, the seedlings have poked their heads out from the soil and grown under Grizz and Allie's painstaking observation and care, until rows and rows of vegetables line the even, level land. In the southeast corner, they've built a pen and coop for the wild turkeys and have begun collecting their eggs.

Elections are being held soon, with much of the town in favor of giving Helena, Gordie, and the others another full term as councilors. There have been whispers of Grizz perhaps joining the council, so impressed is everyone with the job he's done of guaranteeing their longevity through the farm in the clearing, but Allie doesn't think he'll go for it — there's too much to be done, with a small expedition colony on the cusp of moving out there full time. If all things go as planned, Grizz is planning to join them in time, along with Sam and Becca as soon as baby Eden is old enough.

As for Allie...

There's an arm wrapped around her bare waist, pulling her close to a warm, solid chest. "Morning," Harry murmurs against the shell of her ear, his voice husky and deep from slumber.

"Morning," Allie says, turning around in bed so she can face him. His hair is longer again; she runs her hands through it and considers asking Kelly how she'd managed to cut it that time. But then again, she also likes it like this, with so much of it for her to wrap her hands around. "It's moving day."

"It is," Harry smiles, sleep still crusted at the corners of his eyes. "But we don't have to move just yet..."

He holds her even closer still, flush against his body. Allie rolls her eyes, but smiles against his lips when he pulls her in and rolls them so she's on top.

"You guys are disgusting," Becca says to them when they finally make it downstairs for breakfast, the last of the group to arrive. "Thank God you're getting out of here soon. This house is seriously not big enough for three couples at the same time."

Harry, uncaring and smirking, just slings an arm around Allie's shoulders and crunches into his toast.

"She's just saying that," Kelly assures them. "She'll miss you guys, we all will. Especially you, Harry. I think Eden's heart is gonna break without you around."

"Ugh, don't remind me," Becca sighs. "It's so unfair that Harry Bingham somehow has a magical connection with babies to make them stop crying."

"You have to teach me your ways, man," Sam signs. Harry shrugs, faking modesty. Allie knows he's secretly proud of how good he is with children. He’s also come a long way in his ASL studies; it always amazes her how fast of a learner he is, and she’s also touched that he’s gone through the effort at all considering that he and Sam hardly interacted before these last few months. But now that they’re all living together and working towards the same goal, they’ve been spending more time with each other. Not to mention that she and Sam have gotten a lot closer ever since Campbell’s death, and that probably hadn’t gone unnoticed by Harry.

"I'll be up there later in the afternoon with Luke and some of the others," Grizz informs them, forgoing breakfast for just a cup of black coffee instead. "We'll be bringing up the last of the lumber, and some more chicken wire for the coop."

It's a rare occurrence to have all six of them at home at the same time, but they'd wanted to make an occasion out of it, their first and only breakfast together before Harry and Allie depart for the cabin.

Most of the things they need are already there, hauled across several trips in and out of town. Luke and a few of the others are making good progress on creating a direct pathway between the soccer field and the farmland, having cleared out most of the underbrush along the way. They're going to start cutting trees down soon so they can work on making an actual dirt road, one that the John Deere or maybe some golf carts can easily go through, cutting travel time drastically between town and the farm. Inside the cabin, on a pine shelf that Grizz had fashioned for them sit Harry's father's books and records, the photo of Harry and Lucy, and Allie's mother's jewelry box, the polaroids, necklace, and wedding ring all securely inside.

The air is still fresh from the overnight dew clinging on to the grass when Harry and Allie step outside, the sun shining but not high enough in the sky yet for it to be too hot. The last of their things, just a backpack and some extra food and water, are packed into the backseat of the Maserati for its final drive over to the school. They leave the car in the school parking lot, waiting for them and their next trip back into town for supplies.

The building crew is already out there, getting an early start before it becomes too hot to work during the day, hauling branches and leaves into huge trash bags to open up the mouth of what will soon be a full-fledged road.

Next to her, Harry hefts his backpack over his shoulder and smiles. His birthday is next week, both of them just about a year older than they'd been when they'd gotten to this mysterious world. He takes her hand in his, fingers interlaced, his thumb pressing sweet and sure into her first knuckle.

"Ready?" he asks her, morning sunlight casting the world in a peaceful brightness.

Allie nods. "Yeah," she says, squeezing his hand slightly.

And they set off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow wow wow. 
> 
> writing this has certainly been a huge journey. thank you so much everyone for all the kind comments and messages i've received along the way. i never expected this to become what it is now when i first started it. the original outline for this fic intended it to be around 40,000 words or so...obviously that did not happen. all i can say is that i really love the universe they set up in the show and did my best to try and work with the abundance of untapped potential that hallie has in terms of canon. here's to season 2, whenever it may come!
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](https://dystopians.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/harrybinghams) if anyone wants to reach me for prompts or just to say hi and talk about hallie / the society ♡
> 
> p.s. the title of this fic, along with all the chapter titles, is taken from Swan Song by Lana Del Rey. truly a vibe.

**Author's Note:**

> there are so many season 2 things i want to see that i absolutely cannot do justice to, so instead i just decided hallie-fy it all. 
> 
> i've never posted something incomplete before, so please bear with me! hopefully things go according to plan and the rest of this story doesn't spiral too badly out of control.
> 
> if anyone wants to chat or send prompts while this is in the works, you can find me on [tumblr!](https://dystopians.tumblr.com/)
> 
> thanks for reading! ♡


End file.
